Housing market crash sounds more likely

For the past year the favourite metaphor of central bankers and economists who follow the UK's fever...

For the past year the favourite metaphor of central bankers and economists who follow the UK's fevered housing market has been the soft landing. It is a nice phrase, conjuring up an image of a plane coming down gently onto the runway before everyone disembarks happily. Now it is replaced by grimmer aeronautical metaphors: storms, turbulence, and even crash. The soft landing in the UK housing market has been cancelled. A sharp decline is now more likely. And a housing slump may well lead the economy into its first recession this decade. The Bank of England now faces a dilemma on interes...