“Mortgage market nearly doubles in 2006”, read the breathless headline in a Polish newspaper.

Well, that depends on how you define 'nearly'.

Even so, the actual rate of growth in 2006, at 70 per cent, is sufficient to set any investor's pulse racing - anyone who's already in the residential market or is just about to be, that is.

The housing loan market went past the PLN 41 billion (£6.9 billion) mark last year, according to Krzysztof Pietrewicz, the leader of the country's leading banking organisation, the Union of Polish Banks (ZBP).

This compares to a total market worth of PLN24 billion in 2005, the union's data reveals. Some 86 per cent of this money was lent to residential homebuyers.