The news from the UK that the Abbey, one of the major providers of home loans is going to start lending on a five times income basis should perhaps not have been as startling as it sounded, but it still does ring a few alarm bells for the future of much more home ownership, particularly in countries like the UK and Malta, which already have among the highest home ownership rates anywhere.

In my first flat-buying, (well, mini studio with internal kitchen and bathroom which Mepa would call a slum here, and not even allow us to develop) days in the UK, banks and building societies would lend you two and a half times a single income, and three times a joint income.

Although wages were not great, you could in that way just about get onto the property ladder, with the ordinary wage of say a starter housing officer, starter teacher, starter nurse salary. Not in the best area mind you.

The first flat I bought was in Charlton, South East London, (painful when you are an Arsenal fan but what can a girl do!), bang opposite a non-desirable housing estate, which was a fab conversion of a large Victorian house into tiny studios Here you had to put up with the criminality from the estates spilling into your back garden and more, where going out after dark was unadvisable, and where if you ever rebuked anyone, revenge would come back very swiftly from the kind of youth who are now all over London and not only in grotty areas.

Anyway, in those days you could easily get onto the property ladder simply because the maths stacked up.

The first flat cost a little under £30,000 and my income in my first housing officer job padding around the streets of central Brixton (no danger money I’m afraid) was a little more than £10,000.

There were pitfalls. I had no cash for a deposit and I borrowed from the Town and Country Building Society at what was a terrible rate of 16 per cent, but it was the only way to start.

A few evening jobs in pubs and the like kept me afloat until I got promoted, earned more and dropped that awful building society and the endowment from Standard Life which was another waste of my money, and of all the thousands who bought into endowments thinking it would pay off the loan and give you a lump sum. The reality 20 years on is that there are companies advertising on Sky News, advising you on how to claim compensation from all those companies that mis-sold endowment policies. I hope we are going to have similar protection here when private pensions come in with a bang?

Today though, the situation in the UK is certainly much worse. A basic housing officer might start on a wage of £20,000 but your first London flat is not £30,000, it is closer to hundreds of thousands. So clearly, the decision to start lending five times income is realistic, because otherwise you just can’t reach today’s property prices unless mum and dad are helping out, you have an inheritance, an immensely well-paid job, or are one of those lucky people whose employers give you a better home loan rate?

This new five times income ratio comes with some caveats though. You have to have a 25% deposit on the property’s value which once again puts ordinary people out on a limb. Ordinary people (I hate the term working class and middle class when today a supposedly working class plumber is so much better off than a supposedly middle class teacher in the UK or Malta, unless he’s one of these newly arrived Poles who is undercutting all the other plumbers of course) simply can’t get to the new basic prices, and as a result, even here we now have quite a large supply of unsold three-bed stock, although sound data is very hard to come by, and evidence is largely anecdotal.

Banks have helped or raised prices (depending on your chicken or egg view on things) by locally offering 40-year loans, because otherwise the monthly outgoings would leave you with nothing to live on, but many are still being caught short.

And it is fine for a bank to lend you four or even five times your income if you, or both of you are earning 20,000 per annum.

Its very different if you are earning Lm4,000 or Lm5000.

It seems incredible that today in the UK, people like me who could buy her own flat albeit a studio 20 years ago, are now reduced to being able to only afford to buy a quarter of the equity through various schemes on offer.

Tony Blair has a lot to boast about in terms of the economy, but when you have students who will have to start their working life with debts of tens of thousands of pounds sterling, and where the most they can hope to afford to borrow even (!) is a quarter of the value of a flat, it is clear that not all is well.

Our situation is only slightly less dire because of the immensely close families, the frugality of the generation of today’s parents who are thus using their equity and their hard-earned savings and helping their kids on the property ladder.

Without this, we would be in the same shoes as the UK where the housing market has still not bottomed out as it has done in the US.

Whither Malta I wonder? Will it all bottom out or will we have a bumpy, not low-cost landing?

You certainly have to have a chin up attitude to face the housing market today if you have no help from family and earn an ordinary to even a good wage...

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