Last week I asked whether it was time to start buying again. Among those who responded 65 per cent said no, the market has further to fall and 35 per cent said yes, we’re over the worst.

My own view is this: the market does have further to fall, but yes, we are over the worst (talk about having yer cake!) .

That might sound like lunacy, not least when you look at today’s report from the Royal Institution of Chartered Surveyors. But with the benefit of hindsight we will, I suspect, view this RICS report as marker of the market’s low point.

FindaProperty’s editor considers the property space-time continuum (while riding a bike)

Why? The problem in recent months has been mortgage availability, and yesterday’s announcements should make it easier for home buyers to get their hands on the money they need to move.

Not as easy to get hold of as it has been in the past, for sure, but easier.

That will boost transaction levels and as a consequence I expect the supply/demand imbalance, which currently favours buyers, to start edging back in the direction of sellers.

Prices do still have further to fall, but the pace of the falls will ease (that’s already happening) as confidence gradually returns.

Come next spring - if (big if, I know) the mortgage companies deliver - we could be looking at a very different situation. I don’t expect prices to have recovered by then, but I do expect things to have stabilised.

So for buyers sitting on the sidelines, the coming months could present a real window of opportunity.

It is, as I noted last week, always better to buy close to the bottom than to end up on the wrong side of the revival.  We’re not quite there yet, but we’re definitely heading in the right direction.

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During WWII the Ministry of Information printed bright red signs with this ‘chin up’ message.

Now a Tunbridge Wells estate agent has dusted one off and placed it in his front window.

Full marks, we say, to the folks at  Alexandre Boyes for their wry sense of humour … and well done, too, for a clever piece of marketing in the midst of the downturn.

All we need now is for Girls Aloud to release a cover version of “We’ll Meet Again”…

Altogether now…

We’ll move again, don’t know where, don’t know when,
But I know we’ll move again, some sunny day.
Keep smiling through, just like you always do,
‘Til the billions drive the credit crunch away.

For more old WWII posters from the MoI, check out National Archives: The Art of War

In honour of their 10th birthday Google are offering their earliest searchable database from 2001. (So what happened to the 1998-2000 databases eh? Did the cleaner throw them out?)

Anyway, I did a search for ‘FindaProperty.com’ just to see, curious like, and my! How we’ve grown!

Way back in the day, we had a mere 26,158 properties advertised by just 559 agents, but as of today, oh, only 614,938 properties for sale and rent from 9,094 estate agents.

Blimey!

Then:

And now:

The Google results count has changed somewhat as well.

• In 2001 there was a grand total of 4230 results for a ‘FindaProperty.com’ search
• Today there are a whopping 1,870,000 results – so a big up to our SEO team! Woop! Woop!

But before we adorn ourselves with laurel wreaths, here’s a sign of the times. Guess who, in 2001, had 953,000 results on Google but now has 41,600,000?*

Britney, Britney, Britney… what have we done to you?

(* with Safesearch on, workplace computers and all that)

Here at Winging It, we’re all big fans of Charlie Brooker, the highly amusing Guardian columnist.

We also love Big Brother.  Okay, okay, that’s actually just me; the others have more refined tastes, if you overlook their unshakeable devotion to Kevin McCloud.

So it was a happy day - for me, anyway - when I read that Charlie, master of pithy penmanship and brilliantly vivid flights of fancy – has written a TV series set in the Big Brother House.

The premise is something like this: the UK becomes overrun by zombies but, locked away from the outside world, the BB housemates are utterly ignorant.

Sorry, par for the course – the BB housemates are utterly ignorant of the situation.

So in a bizarre twist of fate, this turns the Big Brother House into a place where even sensible people are clamouring to enter.  Not for long, though, because an eviction night is looming…

Brooker describes the series thusly: “‘Dead Set’ isn’t an out-and-out comedy, but an unashamedly populist horror-thriller with blackly comic undertones.

“Think ‘24′ with zombies. And housemates. And gore.”

‘Dead Set’ is due to start on E4 later this month, and features cameos from some former real-life contestants; is it bad to hope that they come to suitably gruesome fictional endings?

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When markets fall people get nervous, sit on the sidelines and wait for things to bottom out.

Calling the low point of a market is, however, very tricky, which is why most experts will tell you that the best possible scenario is to buy close to the bottom – better to make a small short-term loss than to be on the wrong side of the upswing.

Yesterday’s announcements on interest rates and mortgage funding are good news for the housing market, but are they enough to convince people that the worst is over?

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What would happen if the head honchos at our high street banks had to pitch to the fire-breathers on Dragons’ Den?

iBallTv reckon it would run like this …funny, sharp, and all too true…

The latest example of Health & Safety gone mad is the news that young children shouldn’t be allowed to keep hamsters as pets.

And it’s not just the humble hamster that’s been deemed a dangerous health hazard; also in the firing line are lizards, turtles and hedgehogs.

Fair play re: hedgehogs, given that they’re formed almost entirely of spikes.

And I can’t really see turtles or lizards topping my list of suitable household pets for children, either.

But, seriously, where’s the harm in hamsters? I had one when I was little; so did my brother; my best friend – oh, the horror! – had two.

As far as I’m aware, we’ve all made it into adulthood with no discernible side effects from our time spent looking after these little furry creatures.

The anti-hamster argument, which comes from a report by the American Academy of Paediatrics, is that they carry germs.  (And kids don’t?!)

So, because children spend a lot of time chewing on their fingers, they’re more likely to ingest said germs, yada yada yada.

The good news, however, is that once a child reaches the age of five their immune system is better able to cope with potential risks from dastardly rodents.

Ah – but then they have to go to school…and who knows what dangers lurk there?

This morning, I got woken up, not by the familiar sound of my alarm, but by a series of thumps on my front door.  Not knocks: thumps.

By the time I’d recovered from leaping out of bed at high speed, scrambled for my dressing gown, and stumbled down the stairs, two workmen were emerging through the door.

Fortunately – otherwise I’d have zoomed back upstairs and been onto the police pronto - I remembered that the meter was due to be checked, and the landlords had given out the spare keys.

That, I’d presumed, was because the meter people would be coming when I was out at work - but this was 8.15 in the morning, for god’s sake.

Anyway, all was fine, no police time was wasted, and I headed back upstairs to get ready.

About twenty minutes later – it seems meter checking is a long process – one of them hollered up to ask if he could use the bathroom facilities.

Our bathroom is next to our bedroom.  We have thin walls. Cue an immense amount of whistling, humming and banging on my part in a desperate attempt to avoid hearing any untoward noises.

Shortly afterwards they bade a cheery goodbye, leaving me to continue my morning routine uninterrupted.

Or so I thought. Just before heading out, I went into the bathroom to check on the position of the toilet seat – men, y’know - and found a farewell token.

Mercifully, it was of the liquid variety, and he’d obviously been embarrassed that it hadn’t flushed away – there was toilet paper and the lid was down.

But honestly – rude awakenings and lasting impressions - and there was nothing wrong with the bloody meter in the first place.

Have you had any unfortunate experiences with workmen?

We’d like to hear your horror stories…

As of today, Energy Performance Certificates become mandatory for all new tenancies, and landlords will face charges of up to £200 per property if they don’t provide them.

The certificates, which will be valid for a period of ten years, must be issued by an accredited energy assessor, and provided free of charge to tenants.

EPCs rate a property’s energy efficiency using an A-G system of grading, with an ‘A’ rating being an all-singing, all-dancing top score and a ‘G’ being the equivalent of a ’see me after class’ scrawled in red ink.

The certificates were introduced last year for homebuyers, and so far, the average rating has been a ‘could do better’ ‘D’.

While recommendations to improve a property’s efficiency rating are given as part of the EPC, landlords are under no obligation to carry out any improvements.

However, if tenants are faced with a choice of properties with different ratings, it seems likely that they’d opt for the more energy efficient one, as their fuel bills would be lower.

We’d be interested to know what you think about EPCs:

Tenants:

Would a higher energy efficiency rating influence your decision about renting a property? Yes No View Results  Loading ...

Landlords:

Do you think mandatory EPCs will make any difference to your ability to rent out your property? Yes No View Results  Loading ...

Would you be prepared to implement any improvements suggested? Yes No View Results  Loading ...

It was Miguel de Cervante’s birthday yesterday (happy birthday Mig, me old mucker) and so in honour of his most famous character Don Quixote, here are a few choice windmills for sale for him to tilt at.

Sadly they’re all lacking their sails, but I’m sure the Don would still have had a pop at them … “Charles Potherington-Smythe woke up one morning to find a mad Spaniard in his garden poking holes in his windmill.” What will the neighbours say!