Don't tell me about being sold down the river

Friends bemoaning the fall in property prices get short shrift from me at the moment, I'm afraid.

"Try having a flat that has not only gone down in value and is utterly unsellable but is also uninhabitable - and only a few years old," I say.

Most of the time, however, I avoid talking about the saga of our "luxury riverside apartment" that consumes our lives, because it so enrages me.

But now I hear rumours that Fitzpatrick Construction, the company that built our flat, plans a new development in north London, having recently completed Oxygen in east London's Royal Victoria Dock.

I can only hope that since it finished our development, Pacific Wharf, at Rotherhithe, it has learned some lessons - such as it being a good idea to attach windows, six storeys up and bearing the full force of the wind coming off the Thames, to something stronger than hardboard. Or that in these post-Rachman times, one expects a flat that we paid £565,000 for to have some sort of fire protection between the garage and the roof.

But no, when Pacific Wharf's 72 flats were completed in 2001 we had neither - nor, for that matter, proper waste pipes, waterproof roofs or a functioning ventilation system, which means there's also rampant mould.

The National House Building Council, the country's building standards setter and major warranty provider, is now on-side. In one of the biggest rebuilding projects it has ever been involved in, our flat, as one of the first to be worked on, has been stripped down and put back together again.

"So what are you moaning about?" asked a friend. Well, living in the middle of a building site for the past year with the prospect of a further two years' work to come for starters. Then the fact that since we moved in we have had scant opportunity to enjoy the wonderful views of the City and Canary Wharf that enticed us to buy in the first place. Or that for the past six months we've been living in a flat upstairs with half our stuff in storage.

Then there's the day-to-day noise, filth and disruption that starts with delivery lorries at dawn and continues with the hoist groaning up and down and builders tramping round the scaffolding outside the windows. I feel so hemmed in that I escape with our two-year-old daughter to the river path or nearby Southwark Park - far safer than the balcony or courtyard.

Having sold an Edwardian flat in Wandsworth to join the bankers buying into 21st century living on the Jubilee line extension, I wish my only scars from the credit crunch were a £20,000 drop in value and a bit of dry rot.