Bank of England governor Mark Carney sounded a warning last week.

In a newspaper interview, he said he was "very alert personally" to the prospect of a housing bubble since he had lived in the UK at the time of the boom/bust market of the late 1980s and early 1990s.

He said the Bank of England was monitoring house prices very closely and was prepared if necessary to use new powers to restrict mortgage credit and raise the capital requirements on banks to choke off lending.

Ed Stansfield of Capital Economics believes that the comments cast "serious doubt" on whether the mortgage indemnity part of the Help To Buy scheme will go ahead next January, since the central bank is effectively threatening to reverse it.

Combined with the fact that it looks a less appealing deal for various technical reasons for homebuyers and lenders than the existing interest-free loans, Stansfield thought it "quite likely" that "it will be quietly dropped later in the year".

Meanwhile, Carney was at pains last week to clarify his recent forward guidance about interest rates staying low over the next three years.

The markets had reacted sceptically to the original guidance, since it came with numerous get-out caveats depending on what happened to unemployment and the economy in general. Alas, his second effort fared little better as market interest rates rose further.

If the markets are right that the bank is underestimating growth and will have to raise interest rates faster than expected, that will also jeopardise the improvements in the housing market.