Hello, I'd like to register a complaint.What's wrong, then?

This housing market that you assured me was in a healthy state.

Ah, yes, the housing market. Very buoyant right now, sir, pots of money to be made.

That's as may be, but when I got back to my four-bedroom fully refurbished property in a quiet residential neighbourhood close to all amenities, I discovered that the housing market was stone dead.

Dead? No, no, sir, it's not dead. It's resting after a long period of growth.

Resting? Then I'll just wake it up. Hello! HELLO! I've got a nice little converted outhouse next door to a chemical plant - a bargain at just half a million. Hello! Now that's what I call a dead housing market.

It's not dead. It's pining for the fjords - lots of good bargains to be had by the fjords, sir.

Pining for the fjords? Listen, sunshine, I know a dead housing market when I see one. I took the liberty of looking closer at this housing market, and I found out that the only reason it was still standing was that the media was propping it up.

Oh, sir, you just wait and see. Give it just a few more months, and this property market will go voom! Voom!

Mister, this market wouldn't go voom if you put 50,000 volts through it. The property market has passed on. It's demised. Bereft of buyers, it has shuffled off this mortal coil and gone to meet the great auctioneer in the sky. It's so dead that brickor mortis has set in. This is an ex-housing market!

Well, we have been having a bit of trouble moving properties lately. In fact, there's a bit of a stalemate. Buyers are holding back because they're waiting for property prices to drop even further. But sellers, who can't believe their properties have dropped in value, are digging their heels in and refusing to bring their prices down. In the UK, figures from the Royal Institute of Chartered Surveyors show the housing market has slowed to its lowest level since records began in 1978.

So, it's not pining, then?

No, but vendors are pining for the good old days when they could stick a massive price tag on their properties and be confident of closing a sale quickly. Now, in the UK at least, sales are taking longer to close, and sellers are being advised to to bite the bullet and drop their prices.

And presumably brickor mortis is setting in here too?

The recent announcement that Ulster Bank is dumping tracker mortgages is an indicator that the market is starting to seize up here too. The construction industry has all but ground to a halt, and a number of housing projects around the country have stalled.

The sale of Clontarf Golf Club to a developer has fallen through - the developer says it wouldn't be a wise investment in the current climate.

So, you admit the property market is dead. Have you got anything to replace it?

I've got an old dotcom boom in the back of the shop.

Try at home:"Good, news, darling, the rector has agreed to raffle our house in next weekend's jumble sale!"

Try at work:"So, no one's watching Big Brother anymore, and no one wants to buy the Big Brother house. Okay, what can we get for Davina McCall?"