Spring is usually the busiest time of year for house buyers.
Now the clocks have gone forward, more people are likely to step out into the unseasonal weather to start looking at houses they may want to buy. This time last year, house prices were rising. So were stock market prices. One year on and UK shares are now close to a three-year low. In the past 100 years, there have been a handful of stock market crashes which have earned themselves a place in popular memory, largely because their influence swept far beyond a gilded frantic few in a City trading pit.