I remember the media scaremongering that house prices were crashing during the first lockdown and would drop by 30%.

Wasn't just the media - everyone on the industry was expecting a 15% drop when covid hit.

I was talking to someone who was a consultant for the major mortgage lenders in the country in ~June? 2020 (was when things were just starting to open up, but before all the government stimulus) - he'd just come out of a meeting with all the major high street banks mortgage departments and they had just priced in a 15% fall in house prices. Off the back of that all the housing developers slowed building, laid off staff etc expecting this massive slowdown - supplies (bricks, steel etc) all slowed down - then things went insane and the housebuilding sector couldn't catch up with demand over the 18 months that followed.

I would say now supply/demand is probably about back where it was in 2019, but with more of a tilt towards apartments rather than houses due to the price increases.

I don't think we'll see massive reductions in house prices in the near future - demand is still greater than supply and interest rates are due to start falling (a bit) with the spread between the BoE base rate and mortgage rates closing in as the banks stop pricing in a 0.5% hike every 6 weeks.