Picture the scene.

A time when you might actually have more than one completion in a day. Where a company owned BMW 3-series was a sign that you were in the bottom quartile of UK estate agents by performance.

Your Regional Director would bounce into your office smiling and brandishing cakes rather than looking like their dog had just died. Drinks were actually on you on a Friday after work and you were happy about it.

And your branch made a profit. Yes, a profit.

It’s 2006 and it’s the peak of the housing market. The peak ever in fact, a period where 1.67m homes were sold annually.

To put this into perspective the years since 2007 have seen an average annual transaction rate of 1.06m sales – some 36% lower than then. Incidentally, 2020 year will probably end up looking much like the average except that strong beginning and end quarters will border a very saggy middle – the archetypal sh*t sandwich.

2006 was a joyous time. Hedonistic even. A feast of deals, office records being broken, much cash trousered and copious back-slapping. Even Countrywide was a beacon of prosperity and pride.

And now, we’re right back there again (except for the Countrywide part).

The UK property market is in overdrive as a combination of pent up demand from way before Covid hit us and is as much a consequence of prolonged Brexit fence-sitting as it is a lockdown unlocked, ridiculously low interest rates and Rishi Sunak’s nitrous-oxide in the form of his stamp duty let-off.

All of these have contributed to propelling property sales to new heights. Rightmove are reporting that August was the busiest month for both SSTCs and for listings since they first started recording such data ten years ago. Hell, even the RICS Member Survey seems to have a creaky spring in its step of late.

It’s party time again.

Except that parties eventually end. And often if the celebrations were particularly exuberant you find that there’s a lot of clearing up to do afterwards – a broken window or two, a bit of sick on the carpet, dad’s bike missing from the garage, a burned-out microwave in the garden…

Our industry is enjoying itself for the first time in a while. Some of you will not have seen this level of market appraisals, listings, viewings and offers before because you ventured into the sector post-financial crisis and have ridden the mediocre market ever since. Happy times.

In politics, Chancellors of the Exchequer often talk about fixing the roof when the sun is shining. In other words, to put some money away, to invest and to put in place firm foundations when an increase in funds so allows.

It’s a sensible approach in the same way as people save for a rainy day or for future school fees of for their kids’ university costs. Earn now, benefit later. Prudent financial management and all that.

But will the estate agency industry do that, in the knowledge that the current climate will certainly not last? Or will it take the excess off the top, treat itself and then struggle to make ends meet come spring and summer next year?

For sure, it’s a temporary reprieve for an industry that has been blighted for a while and has muddled along with little to show for itself in financial reward terms. Some celebration is justified.

Many will see the next few months bankings as what they ‘deserve’ after such a long time in monetary purgatory.

But that doesn’t mean that the great and the good of estate agency can now believe that they are the High Street equivalent of peak Jordan Belfort nor that you can all be as cocky as to believe in your own ongoing super-powers.

Because this brief respite from ordinariness is not of your making. It is not that you are suddenly the Elon Musk of the Aylesbury property scene. But many of you will now swagger around for a few months as if you were.

You may begin to believe your own hype as you look in the mirror each morning repeating your Tony Robbins’esque mantra ‘I am success. I am property. I am invincible’ or whatever it is that you chant. But alas, you are not in control and this resurgence in activity is not your win – most of you are merely the boat on a tide that floats you higher or lower as it sees fit, pushed around by the elements for a while and, for now, your head has been fleetingly pushed above the water.

The CEOs of previously blighted corporate estate agencies will soon revel in their amazing transformations.

We will hear in their forthcoming announcements to the City of ‘strategies coming good’, teams ‘beautifully innovating’ and of ‘the correct decisions having been made’.

Back to Basics may even briefly appear to be a revelation in management foresight. (Ok, let’s not be too silly, that’s stretching the limits of likelihood a bit too far).

Though what we are seeing is not a new normal. It is not even a return to normality. It is a blip, a temporary euphoria that is as artificial as other such temporary stimulants that some of you may be acquainted with.

The high will end – on April 1^st 2021 to be exact.

The horizon for the industry’s management teams to focus upon right now is therefore not the champagne shelf at the Slug and Lettuce. Neither is it the options list at MercedesBenz.com. You must resist the temptation to ‘invest’ in an upgrade from your usual Suit Company attire to a choice that is more Premiership Footballer than Juvenile Court. And when you hear WatchFinder & Co calling your name because they have a Daytona in the window with your name on it – I’m afraid you must ignore it.

No, the horizon to aim at is post-Spring 2021 and working out how you are going to get through several months of subsequently depleted pipeline, absent buyers and a wider economy that will be ultra-challenging given the double-whammy of the consequences of a non-furlough subsidised Covid world and the unknown of independence from the EU – whatever that ends up looking like in trade terms.

The music is on, the drinks are flowing and the party is in full swing and so enjoy it while it lasts – but keep an eye on the clock.

Because I’m afraid there will be pieces to pick up later and I suspect that some of you will still be too drunk to do so.