With the number of mortgage approvals falling by nearly 50% last month to its lowest level in more than a decade and with more brokers and lenders falling by the wayside each week it’s very difficult to find anything positive to say about our industry at the moment.

I don’t think anyone has ever witnessed anything like the situation we are now facing thanks to the greed and the disastrous overseas investment decisions made by the banking community.

The only piece of good news I can think of is that the Bank of England will have to continue to cut interest rates, but even then this is tainted by the fact that the decisions of the Bank of England’s Monetary Policy Committee now bear little relation to the actual mortgage rates being charged.

Despite having cut the official rate three times in the past five months, the mortgage rates faced by homeowners have actually risen by around 1.25 per cent. The Bank's emergency £50 billion plan to unfreeze the credit markets may eventually help to solve the problem in the short term – with further cash injections a certainty - but not for some time, perhaps a year.

So what should the Bank do? It should cut rates sharply if we are to avoid a US-style recession. Unfortunately I suspect that Mr King will continue to make gradual cuts with the lenders reluctantly passing on a fraction of the decrease.

So house prices will continue to fall and brokers will continue to go to the wall as lenders cut our commission in order to try and boost their profits.