Homeowners are not so bubbly this time That rising house prices could be less than cause for joy underlines how deeply the financial crisis has informed our attitudes and even changed them. In 2006, what appeared to be ever-rising prices were perceived as normal and a more or less unquestionable boon. A rapidly expanding mortgage market meant people could buy with little or no deposit or could even, in the notorious case of Northern Rock, borrow more than the value of the house. No one was "excluded" from the bonanza. Poor credit history, no deposit - it didn't matter, you could still borrow and buy. And in those pre-crisis days there was no embarrassment in being a private landlord with an expanding portfolio of buy-to-lets. But the banking crisis changed all that. Any complacent sense of property wealth evaporated in early 2009 as house prices started to fall. The immediate and almost total withdrawal of mortgages from that point meant only the wealthy, with large deposits, could borrow. And at the same time, the Bank of England's drastic slashing of interest rates made millions of savers only too aware of what was really afoot: the banks and the borrowers who had over-gorged were being given time to rebuild their finances, benefiting from record low borrowing costs and lenders who were instructed to go easy on those who defaulted. The savers - those who had laid money aside - were the ones who must pay. For them, it was a bitterly unfair outcome of the crisis. This more subtle grasp of how the housing market is linked to other aspects of the economy appears now to be prompting the soul-searching. There has been fierce criticism of the rebounding buy-to-let market, where landlords are accused of exploiting a housing shortage and profiting from tenants" inability to raise a mortgage. Today's landlords do not boast - as they may have done in 2006 or 2007 - about their huge yields or expanding portfolios. Many, ironically, are the same savers who complained of low returns on their cash and who have turned to property investments as a result. Elsewhere, younger, aspirant homeowners have successfully mobilised themselves into lobby groups such as Pricedout.org, arguing powerfully that they are being excluded from a fundamental rite of passage older generations took for granted. They call themselves "generation rent" and argue that house price inflation has heaped wealth unfairly on their elders. And many of their parents, the same people who today experience a quiet pleasure at the thought of their property again rising in value, share their anxiety. They want their children to own property, too. And so the doubts run through what has become an emotional debate. Housing, because of the status our culture attaches to owning a home, will always be complicated. But perhaps - at least for now - the doubts are overstated. If you sweep aside the data from London - where most commentators are based and where, often, the media makes its focus - the recovery in the wider market is still early and weak. London is indeed extreme. A house bought in fashionable Notting Hill in 2005 is today, for instance, worth nearly three times as much. Inner London - where residential development is frenzied and properties are marketed in Singapore or Jakarta rather than in a local estate agent - has its own problems, but they are not remotely shared by the housing markets outside the capital. Houses in the UK's worst-performing regions, such as Northern Ireland, are still worth less today than they were a decade ago. There, talk of a bubble would be viewed as a joke - a bad one. Even if prices nationally rise at three or four per cent for the next few years, given the extent of the falls in 2009 and 2010 it will be some time before they recover their 2007 high-point. And if the effect of inflation is taken into account to give a "real" value, house prices would not recover at that level of growth until well into the 2020s. The Government, the Bank of England and other authorities have intervened in the housing market through a range of policies since the crisis. Sustained low interest rates, the availability of cheap funding to lenders, schemes aimed specifically at younger buyers, such as Help to Buy, are just a few of the initiatives. This intervention, regardless of whether in the end it succeeds, itself sparks controversy, with claims that the public will be somehow manipulated into feeling prosperous by the next election. But the ambivalence of the response to this week's news of rising prices suggests the electorate is not so easily led. Having endured the crisis, homeowners are better equipped to draw their own conclusions about rising prices - blessing or curse. In any case, at least outside the capital, it is probably too early to read the trend. Potential buyers are indeed on the horns of a dilemma - caught between fear on one hand that prices will rise further, and doubts on the other about the wisdom of borrowing hugely while rates are low - but these are informed anxieties. Among the plethora of housing data in recent weeks, for example, was the fact that four in five new mortgages are arranged on a fixed-rate basis. Mark Carney, the new Governor of the Bank of England, may have indicated only last week that rates will stay low for years - but these borrowers are taking no chances and are trying to limit their risk. That behaviour, at least, doesn't seem like the heedless greed typical of buyers in an asset bubble.