Ever had problems finding a gift for the garage owner who has everything?  Yep, me too.  It’s an all-too-common problem these days.

But not any more! An enterprising German company has come up with the perfect solution: photo tarpaulins in handy garage-sized dimensions.

Take your pick from a staggering array of designs.  Yacht; racing car; jet plane; vintage motor; wine cellar; kids.

Hold on: kids? Whaaat??! ! Apparently you can order a customised garage door by sending in photos of your family or pets. Which will then be super-sized. Hmmm … not so sure about that!

Then again … perhaps I’ve stumbled across the true purpose of this inspired product: home security.

Freakishly large puppies and colossal kittens? Babies of Amazonian proportions? Good lord, there’s not a burglar in the land would come anywhere near…

Welcome to our new series where we’ll be focusing on a different property type each week – a bit of a 57 varieties of the residential world, if you like.

To start: thatched cottages - simply because they appeal to my retirement fantasy of living a Miss Marple-esque existence where I effortlessly solve local village crimes from behind net curtains.

And so, without further ado, we present our top five thatched specimens, direct from FindaProperty.com’s current listings:

(Click on pictures for full property details)

1. Chippenham, Wiltshire

2. North Cotes, Lincolnshire

3. Wallingford, Oxfordshire

4. Climping, West Sussex

5. Hungerford, Berkshire

Anyone see Property Snakes & Ladders the other night? Quite an interesting show about the conversion of an old railway station.

This put me in mind of a couple of very cool homes I’ve come across recently – both made from old railway carriages.

First up is this one in Dorset – which looks a bit like the 9:15 to Weymouth has crashed into the side of a timber-framed chalet (actually two beach huts).

But fear not, there’s been no rolling stock/beach hut catastrophe here – the crafty owner, none other than Paul Atterbury off the Antiques Roadshow (anyone under 30 – ask yer granddad), installed the carriage to let out.

And he makes, it says here, “an excellent income” from the arrangement. Go Pauly!

(Click on pictures for full property details)

The second one is playing serious havoc with my hankerings to clear off and live a life of rustic simplicity by the sea … I’m not sure I’ll be able to do any work at all today after looking at this (but hey, that’s why they invented meetings)

It’s a 1920s railway carriage converted into a quaint little cliff-side home. And if you’re thinking that £375,000 is a tad pricey for a converted train carriage, look again.

The real draw here is the surrounding ten acres of waterfalls and ferns, orchards and mixed woodland, fields and wild heather, all of it leading down to Kennack Sands Beach.

There isn’t a lot more I can say about this … too busy drooling.

Ps: anyone know if you can make a living farming ferns?

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Our technical chaps are always busy trying to come up with clever new features that make life easier for our users.

So when Barry from the ‘Build Cool New Stuff’ team was seen running naked around the car park roaring “Eureka!” we knew that either A) they’d come up with something quite good or B) old Baz has been working too hard and needs a very long holiday.

Fortunately, in this case it was A.

The feature in question allows you to find out how much a property has been reduced by - so as you browse the property listings keep an eye out for the new Reduced From flag. It’s yellow and looks like this:

Click pic for example

Properties with this flag include the current price and below it you can see the price it was originally advertised at – which, I think you’ll agree, is very helpful if you’re planning to make an offer.

To activate this feature, all you have to do is sign up at Register with FindaProperty.com. When you register you have the added advantage of receiving email updates with new properties matching your requirements.

If you have any suggestions for other features we could add to make your property hunt easier please send them to:

PleaseBuildMoreCoolNewStuff@findaproperty.com.

Here’s an interesting graph from Nationwide’s latest house price index (June) showing the decline in the amount of property currently on the market.

It’s using data from the Royal Institution of Chartered Surveyors and it doesn’t need a huge amount of explanation: basically, since the credit crunch, stock levels in the sales market have plummeted.

In RICS’ own words: “New instructions to sell property fell further in May. This series has now dropped in every single month over the last two years and, if anything, the picture appears to be becoming more acute.”

The Nationwide notes that the recent recovery in house prices has occurred despite historically low levels of house purchase and they conclude that low stock levels explain this anomaly.

“Normally, such a low level of house purchases would be associated with falling house prices … however, there continues to be a relentless drop in the stock of property available for sale. As a result, prices have been able to stabilise even in the face of very low demand.”

Fair enough, but will stock levels rise, and what will happen if they do? One possible scenario is that the more stable sales market will encourage people to put their homes on the market. Job losses, alas, will also force more people to sell.

But will demand rise to meet increasing stock levels? Our own figures suggest demand is already strong – in June, visitors to FindaProperty.com were up 12.6 per cent year-on-year and enquiries to agents were up 15.6 per cent.

But as we all know, interest is still not translating into significantly more sales. Unless it starts to, a rise in stock levels could tip the balance again and put the pressure back on prices.

This is why the NAEA today called on the Government to “do more to ensure that money that has been given to banks finds its way through the system and into the housing market.”  We second that … but will the call be heard?

In the meantime, the upside of this situation is that low stock levels mean sellers are in as good a position as they’ve been in months - lots of interest and little competition. So if you’re thinking about selling, this could well be the moment to go for it.

The winner of Shed of the Year 2009 has been announced over at The Shed Blog, and wooah! What a wonder!

In fact, it’s such a humdinger of a shed that Steven Harwood’s Kite Cabin has caused some heated debate in the Editorial Dept here at FAP Towers.

“It’s bigger than my bloody flat,” spluttered Mike one indignant employee who shall remain nameless.

This was swiftly followed by “that’s not a shed” and “it’s got a bloody great big satellite dish!”

Similar outraged mutterings continued for a while and, whilst we did not reach a concord over whether or not a wooden structure with satellite TV, bunk beds, a composting toilet, and other mod cons is indeed a shed in the truest sense, we did agree that it’s a lovely thing.

Moreover, its situation, which seems to be overlooking a valley behind Harwood’s house in Llandysul, is stunning.

Nice one Steven, enjoy the cheese.

*** UPDATE 24/7/09 Alan has now done his plinth stint and very entertaining it was too. Well done sir! ***

Walk around Trafalgar square in Central London and you will notice that one of the plinths is lacking any customary statuary.

Known as (wait for it) “The Fourth Plinth” it was originally meant to display a mounted William IV. But there wasn’t enough money for that, and when eventually there was enough money no-one could agree on what to put there. So it’s remained mostly empty ever since.

However should you be passing said plinth midday on July 24th 2009 and look up, the plinth won’t be empty. Nope.

Instead the friendly, furry* face of our very own Helpdesk Team Leader, Quiz Guru and Games Geek, Alan Faller will be beaming down at you.

Fear not, he hasn’t been evicted from his Brighton home.

And no, he’s not protesting the lack of a GCSE in Gamesmastery in the national curriculum.

Instead he’s been chosen to take part in One & Other - Antony Gormley’s living portrait of the UK - and he’s writing about it over on his Art Imitating Life blog.

Go on, have a read and give him some help. He needs it, as he hasn’t got a clue what he’s going to do for an hour, on an empty plinth, in the middle of London.

*He is not an Ewok, he just has a beard.

Unlike Jocelyn some of us didn’t want to remortgage our homes and go to Glastonbury this year to spend four days in a soggy tent listening to the constant thump thump of the dance tents.

No sirree, that’s not for me. I stick two fingers up to Glasto and have instead created the Staying At Home FindaProperty.com Anti-Festival playlist on Spotify.

“Say what?”, “Spotty who?”

Let me explain …

Spotify is a program that lets you listen for free to all of those albums you used to have on tape or vinyl and had forgotten about, or lost, or lent to an ex-girlfriend.

Spotify also lets you create and share playlists from said albums. You see where I’m going with this?

Yes, I’ve made an anti-festival playlist. Forget wet tents and smelly toilets, this is all about your home. Your wonderfully warm, comfortable and above all DRY home.

There are tunes to everybody’s taste. From Dolly Parton to the Doves, Crowded House to the Cramps and Madness to the Mystery Jets.

Songs about home, songs that remind you of home, songs that make you homesick.

Sign in or up to Spotify*, listen to the playlist then let us know your own ‘home’ song suggestions in the comments below.

*Only if you want to of course. I don’t want to force you or anything. It’s entirely up to you, but if you don’t, you’re missing out on a peach of a playlist

Something very strange has happened, a huge reversal of fortunes, a massive volte-face by the missus - we are, after all, going for a flat.

It may have looked like I had lost this particular discussion - but not so.

Thanks to a flash of genius, and to ensure that my involvement in the physical move was kept to the absolute minimum, I suggested that we put an offer in for the flat we currently rent.

I’d imagine that the most stressful element of moving house is packing. Followed closely by unpacking and putting everything in the right place, which I’m convinced I’ll be incapable of doing and I know Ruth would agree.

I’m really struggling to find a downside. We know the area really well, get on with our neighbours, know what the property is worth and are both genuinely happy where we are.

So we made an offer. Which was refused

The impression we get from our agent is that there’s room to haggle, which is nice of him as he’s not paying a penny. But I have to say that he’s been a great help.

Having two people buying a property together isn’t any easier when you’re both purchasing for the first time.  In some cases, it could be seen as being even harder…

Hypothetically speaking, it is perhaps a natural inclination when you buy a home to think of the improvements that can be made; very prudently increasing the value. But where does this stop!

We live in the place already but that hasn’t stopped us talking about a new kitchen, carpets throughout and cutting down on clutter - which normally means my Rothmans Football Annuals 1986 - 1992 ending up in the recycling bin. But this is all hypothetical mind…

What is special about buying with your partner is being able to share these conversations with someone who has just as big an interest. So I’m enjoying planning what we’re going to do although slightly aware that we may be getting ahead of ourselves.

But with our agent’s advice we’ve increased the offer and are awaiting the vendor’s decision, although he’s pretty confident we’ll get the thumbs up. Exciting times.

Here’s to hoping my new found good luck doesn’t run out soon.

On the eve of my annual sojourn to Glastonbury, I’m keeping everything crossed that the current forecast of sun, sun, sun, holds true for the next five days.

My faith in meteorologists is such, however, that I’ll be taking my tartan wellies regardless of all the wee suns pictured on the BBC website.

But why is it that as soon as there’s a sniff of proper summer weather, the doom-mongers over at the insurance companies are busy peddling pessimism?

Seemingly not content with spending the last couple of summers convincing us that we were all in imminent danger of flooding, they’ve now come up with a contingency plan for the sunny weather. Subsidence.

According to the experts at Halifax Home Insurance, the forthcoming heatwave on the back of two wet summers is a sure-fire sign that many of the UK’s homes are about to sink.

While I’m fully aware that subsidence is a very serious issue and that weather is a contributory factor, I’m a bit fed up of insurance companies having a catastrophe for every season.

Maybe some of these insurance bods should hotfoot it down to Glastonbury Green Fields this weekend and just chill out. Man.

Note: Since I last looked – mere hours ago - the forecast for Glasto has changed from wall-to-wall sunshine to a Somerset monsoon.  I am sooo in a camper van next year.