Signs that the housing market will die this year have been around for some time. Now the writing on the walls is five feet high.

Looking through the property sections of weekend newspapers recently, I’ve been anything from astounded to angry at the opinions given house-room – alongside thin articles with headlined question marks: will it? Won’t it? Can they? Perhaps if there was an answer at the end of this froth, the supplements would be worth reading. As of last weekend, I’ve stopped even opening them. With one or two highly notable exceptions, the journalists involved simply don’t add any value.

As a domestic property player, there are very few things you need to know right now. The banks are cash-strapped and risk-averse. Full-time employment is falling. Asset-buying cash purchasers have pushed up the top end properties, but nothing much else is moving without vendors taking a drop in price. The population is, by and large, nervous. And as no bank will fix a mortgage beyond two years without massive fees, it’s pretty obvious they think interest are going up…as they must.

This is one of those rare times when, if I had somewhere cheap to hide out for a couple of years, I’d cash out of the market immediately. And if you still want to know why, I’d cite all the reasons in the previous paragraph, plus three more.

The first is a clear sign that the collapse is already beginning. Mortgages granted during January fell by 49%, according to figures from the Council of Mortgage Lenders. Fine, OK – I know it was January, and very cold: but there’s a lack of qualifying buyers, a lack of money, and a lack of demand. The weather has exacerbated the situation, but it didn’t cause it.

The second involves the Government’s near-insolvency, and hence inability to bail anyone out who’s stuck with no job and high repayments. Some recent research studied by the Telegraph (one paper that really is on the ball at the minute) shows that slightly under a quarter of all homeowners are living on the edge of mortgage affordability. There are going to be a lot of repossessed homes on the market by next year, and a lot of financial institutions desperate to have the cash rather than the asset. Prices will fall, and it’s going to be a buyers’ market like nothing we’ve seen since 1989.

The third can’t be quantified in less than a thick tome, but involves a suspicion The Slogger has had since 2006: that the structure of investment and wealth is undergoing qualitative change. There is more to it than the West-to-East thing: the value of property as an asset per se is based on myriad factors…and all of them are turning against the UK as a venue.

Education availability is massively important to buyers. Our education system is a crock, and becoming another State institution (along with the police, health and local government) heading for status as a cash-starved custodian of the lowest common denominator.

Proximity to employment is another must. No comment on that one – but we’ve already seen EU migration halved by our recession: when we truly hit the buffers, those who came in search of work or a handout will look for cushier billets elsewhere. Looking at London specifically, financial services export earnings have halved since the world woke up to the fact that our bankers are just as dumb as everyone else’s bankers. And of course (allegedly) it’s getting harder to be a non-dom here.

All this adds up to a smaller medium-lease rental market; and while some will turn to renting after being turfed out of what they ‘owned’, if they can’t repay mortgages, they sure as hell won’t be able to pay rents which are, on average, 60% higher per month net. Renting out will become less lucrative for landlords; as rates rise, they too will offload property…and prices will drop further.

There is a key point here, and it’s this: for the last thirty-five years, the majority of Britons have become used to the idea of expensive mortgages afforded by living on plastic, the latter to be paid off at each property sale – or not at all. What’s been brutally obvious for fifteen months now is that a step-change in behaviour has occurred.

Were this to be a short-lived problem (lack of credit and the need to reduce debt) the old behaviours would rapidly return. But this isn’t a short-term problem. What we are going through is a creeping realisation, by those who are fully awake, that future wealth is unlikely to consist largely of one’s domicile. Not only are we going to get poorer as a nation, individually we’re going to find it tougher to build up a nest-egg for old age (little or no stock market growth)…and be facing a State unable to pay us much (or care for our ailments) when we get old. Spending like a mad person is going to become as unacceptable as smoking is today.

This isn’t going to leave much for property ladders, home improvements and aspirations to House Beautiful. My own view is that there will be an explosion in institutional savings in the middle market; and a switch into safe-haven investments further upmarket. Domestic property as a sector will become less of a media and personal obsession – and revert to being where we live and have a home.

There’s only one curved ball that could render this prophecy utterly wrong – and that’s an accelerating climate-change tipping point, following which our cooler climes will become infinitely desirable. However, that’s a far from proven outcome: and if it materialises, I somehow think the last thing on our minds will be property values.