Gazoff
I SUPPOSE that gazundering has gone away. It worked when house prices were falling and the buyers would revise their offers, downwards. Now prices are rising, the sellers are asking for more, gazumping is back, and ministers itch to do something about it. Their latest shiny new initiative coincides with figures from the mortgage lenders, whose business is booming. Some new head in Whitehall is surely big enough to put two and two together, and to recog- nise gazumping as a symptom of our nation- al weakness for house price inflation. Put like that, the treatment is higher interest rates and the cure would be a stable mone- tary policy, but ministers are always happier when trying to cure symptoms. They can expect to find themselves gazundered.
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