It seems like about five minutes ago that we were welcoming in 2018 and wondering what it might have in store for the local market.

Turns out we were wasting our time with any amount of optimism and should have resigned ourselves to a year of Brexit-fueled misery from the off.

There have been moments of light relief to blot out the pain, however.

Indeed, a glance at our countdown of the year’s most popular online stories shows that while the market may have been mostly flat, there was still joy to be had – mainly in the fantasy realm.

Take the story about Dancers Hill House, the massive mansion near Barnet that could still be yours for the price of a £13.50 raffle ticket. What’s not to like about a six bed dream home with gym, wine room, cinema room and one-and-a-half acre lake? The competition’s still open if anyone’s up for entering.

Our look at St Albans’ most expensive homes of 2017 also scored high on the web traffic front, with the sale of Wick House for £7.1 million topping that particular list by some margin.

We also liked reading about the couple who set out to sell their St Albans property by producing their own drone footage of the city, which promptly went viral.

Then there was the unpopular (apart from among those who already live there) gating of Gabriel Square, which was this year’s most-read comment piece, closely followed by last month’s look at the Evening Standard’s thoughts on St Albans and Stevenage.

Which will be the huge houses, controversial developments and unique home marketing techniques we’ll all be talking about during 2019?

We can but wait and see…