It's no secret that the residential property market peaked around the third quarter of 2007, having risen at an accelerating pace since circa 2004.

As the pace increased so the need to simplify our analysis of value became more apparent. Agents, valuers, and almost everyone associated with the valuation and marketing of property, moved away from the sort of comprehensive analysis which took account of the accommodation, type, style, location and quality of accommodation in favour of the simplified medium of appraising it in terms of £s per square foot.

Very little account was taken of the design, layout, condition, storey or aspect. Sales were happening so fast that there really wasn't time to take account of such 'trivialities'.

Newly converted apartments in a development which we handled in Collingham Place were sold during 2007 at a mean average price of just over £1,100 per sq ft, and in Barkston Gardens we sold an unmodernised 1,350 sq ft flat for £1.25m, which equated to approx £925 per sq ft.

Further West we recorded a sale in Earls Court Square at £465,000. This was a 538 sq ft flat with 1 bedroom. The price per sq ft was therefore £864. Wherever one looked in SW5 it was hard to find anything for sale being quoted at much less than £700 per sq ft.

Mirroring the slick attitudes of the new City culture, homes had become commodified and were being sold, like pieces of cloth, by the measure. And sadly just as the City seems reluctant to reform itself now, so we find that property is once again being sold 'by the foot'.

Within months of the 2007 spike in property prices, the financial world was to turn itself on its head, and by the end of 2008 the likes of Lehman Brothers Bank were history. RBS, Lloyds and Barclays share prices were tumbling at an unprecedented rate and although the Bank of England base rate had been cut to 'next to nothing', for the first time in history there was barely a home mortgage to be found.

Fast forward a year and we find ourselves in an intriguing situation. There are still very few viable mortgage loans available, yet house prices have bounced back and sales are being made.

But that's not the end of the story. The interesting aspect of all this is that prices have recovered quite remarkably.

So much so that we recently 'sold out' a small development in Kempsford Gardens, achieving up to £865 per sq ft for a compact 2 bedroom apartment.

And there are other examples of the recovering market too. Take Wetherby Mansions where we currently have competing bids for a 2,100 sq ft apartment in excess of £835 per sq ft. The end measure is not yet known.

The market is not yet at the heady levels of the 2007 peak. Nevertheless there is no doubt that, in Kensington for sure, it has bounced back with a vengeance. So much so that we're all once more talking in terms of square feet rather than taking the time to consider the more abstract aesthetic qualities of the subject property.

And to add fuel to this current fire we have the bizarre additional ingredient, being the cash buyer. It seems that many investors have recently lost faith in the money markets and, instead, are quite content to take the old fashioned view that their money is best tied up in bricks and mortar. What goes around comes around!