Forecast housing bust nine years ago.

I found this letter of mine by accident - it was published in the Observer on Sunday September 12 1999.

"The article on property prices (News, last week) talks about a house price boom. It is, of course, a land price boom. The value of the bricks and mortar hardly changes. Nobody has been asked to increase the value of their fire insurance cover as a result of this boom, which is purely a feature of the current phase of the land market. Like every previous land price boom, this one will end in a crash."

It took nine years in the end, but until a few months ago all the pundits were forecasting a "soft landing".