Pray, attend to this most curious tragedy! It appears that the wretched soul wishing to acquire a roof over his head in our current age is to be stripped of his final sanctuary: the installment plan. Mistress Christina Malkhasyan, a lady of some standing in the guild of mortgage brokers, has sounded the alarm in a most spirited discourse, predicting that the common citizen shall soon find the doors of convenience slammed shut in his face.

You see, the gentlemen in authority, in their infinite and misplaced wisdom, intend to forbid the merchant-builders from augmenting the price of a property when sold via installments. At present, the difference between paying a lump sum of gold and paying in parcels can be as vast as fifteen or twenty per cent—a margin upon which the greedy commercialist feasts with great relish.

Mistress Malkhasyan views this administrative meddling as a farce of the highest order. "Should the State forbid these builders from removing their discounts," she posits with a sharp wit, "the developers—those cunning speculators—shall simply cease to offer such arrangements altogether. Why, indeed, would a merchant freeze his capital at a price beneath the market's whim? It would be a scandal to his ledger!"

For the average family, the installment plan has been a most noble alternative to the predatory clutches of the bank. In such an arrangement, there is no usurious interest to devour one's savings; every single shilling goes toward the actual debt. Contrast this with the mortgage, where a delay in construction means the borrower merely feeds the banker's appetite with interest—gold that vanishes into the ether, never to be reclaimed even should the contract be torn asunder. With installments, however, a delay allows the buyer to extend his payments without the burden of a single extra penny.

"Such regulation," concludes the lady, "may rob the market of its only flexible instrument, the sole tether holding the demand steady while mortgage rates soar to heights that would make a mountain goat dizzy."

It is a dismal state of affairs indeed. Indeed, other experts have already cast doubt upon the supposed virtues of 'family mortgages,' suggesting they are but a drop of ink in an ocean of despair, wholly insufficient to revive the appetite for new dwellings. One can almost hear the laughter of the great speculators as they watch the poor man scramble for a place to sleep!