House price crash may lead to end of life in London as we know it

Figures just released show that the cataclysmic disaster that economists have been endlessly predicting for the past 10 years may actually be coming to pass. London house prices may tumble.

Last month, house prices dropped by as much as 0.001 per cent, taking the value of a terraced broom cupboard in the exclusive Mayfair district to under the £1 million mark for the first time since records began. From here it is but a small slippery step to the end of the world.

As the news spread, frantic hostesses across the capital rushed to cancel pre-Xmas dinner parties, shocked into panic by the realisation that their guests would have nothing whatsoever to talk about now that the property boom had ended. Indeed, experts have predicted that it will take London's middle classes anything up to five years in the social wilderness before they can think up another topic which allows for such a level of post-prandial self-satisfaction.

It has been conservatively estimated that 98 per cent of all the wealth in the south-east is in form of property. If there is any significant correction — i.e. a fall — then the effects on the economy will be apocalyptic.

Analysts who have been trying to pinpoint a catalyst for the market's collapse now believe that they may have done so. "The first sign of this disaster came from the West Country area," said one grim-faced Building Society executive. "In Bristol actually. Some Australian made firm offers on two luxury flats down there and then pulled out of the deal. This immediately provoked a crisis of confidence across the UK and the next minute prices crashed and burned. We'd love to track the guy down but he seems to have vanished."