In that time, property prices in his area have soared as much as 175% far more than the national average. Yet most of the increase occurred during the first five years he was in business.

Salvi says he has not experienced "boom conditions" since 2000, at the height of the stock market bubble: while there have been minor fluctuations, average home prices in his patch are little changed since just before the September 11 2001 terrorist attacks in the US.

For that reason, Salvi cursed when Mervyn King, governor of the Bank of England, warned last month that the risk of a fall in house prices had increased. "It was overkill. We lost five deals that Monday as a result," he said. In his opinion, the market in which he works had already experienced the "soft landing" that King was trying to engineer.

Nationally, however, UK prices were rising at rates of 20% or more a year. Across the western world, homeowners and estate agents such as Salvi are bracing themselves for more of this sort of central bank intervention as the global interest rate cycle turns, partly in a bid to cool overheated housing markets and excessive borrowing.

But in all countries, pockets of blistering hothouse prices sit alongside cooler spots such as Salvi's Docklands. That complicates the task of central bankers trying to engineer a correction without causing a collapse.

Evidence so far suggests that housing markets where rates have risen are slowing gently, rather than suffering from panic selling. That is good news for policy makers worried about the effect a sharp jolt to confidence could have on their over-leveraged economies.

Whether this sense of calm persists depends on how high rates are expected to rise.

In Australia, two interest rate rises in quick succession last year appear to have cooled house price inflation in Sydney and Melbourne, its two biggest cities.

In the UK, the first quarter of the year saw feverish price rises, especially in the less affluent north of England. But after a rise of 100 basis points in interest rates since November, and especially following King's warnings, many estate agents report slackening home sales and falling asking prices.

Mortgage lenders have also seen signs of a slowdown in June.

The evidence in Britain to say this is the long-awaited correction, however, is still inconclusive indicators of activity have fluctuated wildly for several years and there have been several false peaks.

Most recently, the US' quarterpoint rate rise last week to 1,25% was the first in four years. But the expectation of higher rates had led to a flurry of home-buying in the first half of the year to catch the best mortgage deals before borrowing costs rose.

The average price of a Manhattan apartment touched almost $1m this spring.

Given the pace of global house price growth recently, few would dispute that properties in many countries are to some extent overvalued.

In a recent research paper, Goldman Sachs, the investment bank, warned that the US, UK and Australian housing markets were overvalued by 10%, 15% and 29% respectively, after prices had risen by 37%, 96% and 82% in real terms since the mid-1990s. It said all three markets were at risk from higher rates.

Globally, the ratios of house price to income are at their highest since the last housing market boom crashed in the late 1980s.

But housing market bulls argue that this is not a cast-iron sell signal. FPD Savills, the UK estate agency, argues that because of low interest rates, the average household still spends less on bond payments than it does on transport and travel despite the increase in house prices.