Rip-off thieves. Parasites on a gravy train. Worms. Leeches. Con artists. Two-faced crooks. . . all descriptions of the humble estate agent offered last week in the public domain. Such venom — and all this at a time when we should really be feeling sorry for them.

Apparently, 150 branches a week are shutting down, and 4,000 estate agencies will have closed by next year. Their plight even made it onto Radio 4’s Today programme, which painted a picture of the career prospects of your average estate agent as being about as healthy as those of a pub landlord. Perhaps publicans and estate agents should join forces and start their own helpline, as the end seems to be nigh for both institutions.

Once you think about it logically, of course, jumping up and down on the grave of the estate agent is rather daft. Their suave cupidity is but a manifestation of our own greed, albeit in a smart suit and with a flash car. They were in work only because we wanted to use their services, and they got rich only because they helped us to get as much as was humanly possible for our properties.

“They aren’t rocket scientists,” says Ed Mead, director at Douglas & Gordon, of his fellow agents, from his holiday in Mustique. (Times are clearly not that bad for all members of the profession.) “Their responsibility is to their client, the seller. And, yes, they will carry on saying everything’s fine for too long. One of the problems with being an estate agent is that sellers do not want to hear bad news until it’s too late.

“I know it’s difficult to feel sorry for estate agents, but you should remember that, if they aren’t doing very well, then the average person in the street isn’t doing very well either.”

Well, there’s a silver lining in that somewhere. With nobody selling any property — at least not for about another five years — all the estate agencies will go out of business, which means high streets up and down the country will become a bit more interesting, as they will start having proper shops on them again. Except that nobody’s going to have any money to spend in them, so they will all go bust too.

The property crisis has to be the fault of the estate agent (or blood-sucking leech) because it’s got to be someone’s fault. These disasters don’t happen out of thin air — and someone should pay for it. That’s the current thinking, and how very British this is.

It was all right, for a bit, to blame the Americans and their murky sub-prime dealings, but that became a bit dull after a while, because it was too far away, and nobody really knew what sub-prime was. Nor did we take the whole thing seriously until the prices of our own homes started to fall, at which point we needed a more accessible target for our disappointment and venom.

The target has manifested itself on several levels. At the most basic, raw element — let’s call it the blog level — everyone seems to be ranting against either the “parasites”, which means anyone who has ever been associated in any way with a property show on television or, more bizarrely, those who have already paid off their mortgages. Even property commentators such as myself are not immune, you will be shocked to hear.

On the ground — let’s call it school-gates level — we are all blaming the estate agents for ramping up the prices and pushing silly new developments in our faces. And for driving around in hideously chavvy cars.

A little further up — why not call it dinner-party level? — it’s the buy-to-let landlord who is to blame. Shocking! Buying 250 apartments in Leeds or Sheffield before they were even built, relying on rental guarantees, cutting out first-time buyers and now wondering where the tenants have gone and what happened to all those wonderful projected profits.

In any case, many of these buy-to-let landlords have already made a small fortune — which is even more of a reason to hate them.

In the conditioned air of the litigant’s office, meanwhile, the blame patrol is fingering the lapel of big business. Elizabeth Robertson, fraud lawyer at Addleshaw Goddard in the City, believes developers and surveyors are to blame for unleashing a cocktail of overpricing and collusion on trusting (yet greedy) investors.

“The front line is anyone who is insured,” she says with just a bit too much glee in her voice. “Solicitors and surveyors in particular, because they are much more attractive targets.”

Yes, well, obviously lawyers are going to be busy over the coming months. Robertson is involved in just such a case as we speak.

So, what exactly are you going to throw at them? Quite a lot, apparently. “It will be a list of problems, ranging from professional negligence by developers who filled areas entirely with investors, so a community never managed to grow, to criminal cases where we can show collusion between valuers, agents and surveyors.”

Where? Everywhere, apparently. “Manchester, Leeds, Birmingham,” she continues. “I have heard that, in all these cities, surveyors and developers were all too close together. They were negligent about their professional conduct, so allowed overvaluation and less than honest self-certification [where a buyer falsely certifies their income]. Now that the guaranteed rents have come to an end, the whole thing has collapsed.”

How about the banks? Well, they are complicit as well, according to Robertson. In addition, many of them actually own estate agencies, so there is a glorious circularity about the whole thing. Does this mean we can call the banks “two-faced crooks”? Probably.

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