We’ve all read the headlines about the property crash. But what’s it like to see your buy-to-let nest-egg auctioned off for less than half you paid for it. Richard Pendlebury reports from the frontline …

Richard Pendlebury, Daily Mail – 25 June 2008

A famous party venue for 140 years, the Cafe Royal is perhaps an unusual location for a wake. But yesterday, several hundred people gathered under its crystal chandeliers to mark a further nail in the coffin of the property boom.

Officially, the event in question was simply the latest housing auction to be held at the Regent Street venue. Yet it became apparent early in the proceedings that the 297 lots on offer there were a guided tour of Britain’s worsening property crash.

Over the course of the day, properties from Bridgend to Newcastle upon Tyne either failed to sell or went for sums which made a mockery of their original, overinflated, asking prices. ‘It was wince-inducing,’ said one auction analyst last night – full article