By Tony Booth

Stories of ill-fated property speculations, originally fuelled and encouraged by the buy-to-let boom, are now being reported on a daily basis. No doubt this weekend there will be more.

One recent one I read was in the Mail on Sunday, which headlined how one investor faces possible bankruptcy because her BTL investments have failed in spectacular and disastrous fashion.

She blames the banks for excessive lending, the developers for making unfulfilled assurances and the market for collapsing - but is this actually just another example of a novice investor with insufficient knowledge or experience failing to appreciate how the property market works?

The newspaper explained how Anne had been a taxi-driver for most of her life and, like countless other people, she had nurtured aspirations to join the growing throng of property speculators making a fortune from the UK's buy-to-let explosion.