ABSTRACT
From the late 1960s to the late 1980s, the home ownership market in Britain has experienced a series of cyclical booms, the first in the early 1970s, the second in the late 1970s, and the third from the mid to the late 1980s. Although prices fell in real terms during the downturns, and substantially so in the mid 1970s, the dominant expectation of British home owners was of more or less permanent house price inflation which would, at minimum, keep pace with rising prices. Houses were viewed as a good investment, possibly the best there was for most people. Until the 1990s this was broadly correct, though most people were unaware of how far prices had fallen in real terms during the downturn of the mid 1970s. But in the 1990s the losses experienced by many new buyers were cash losses, not just real ones. For them, the housing market was a way of rapidly losing money and even of losing their home if they were unable to maintain the mortgage payments.
