Fuel and food prices are on the up, house prices are on the slide and the papers are full of features telling us all how to atone for our ten-year credit binge and mega splurge down the shops.

Now, it seems, is the time to make do and mend, to grow yer own, to reduce, reuse, and recycle.

But if Phil & Kirstie were the cheery faces of the property boom, who will advise us on how to live with the downturn?

(Pic ©  Press & Publicity, Durham County Council.)

Step forward – or, if you prefer, trot into the limelight astride your rather lovely mule - Chris Jones and Louisa Gidney, Principal Peasant and Associate Peasant at … Rent A Peasant: Living History With Livestock.

These, I feel sure, are the people to teach us the skills we will need to survive in a credit crunched, eco degraded world.

Stuff like how to look good in a smock, how to play the hurdy gurdy, how to eat a turnip, and how to sing a song with the words hey nonny nonny in the chorus.

Ah but won’t life be grand when we’ve all had a peasant makeover … thatch and cob, flagons o’ cider, rosy cheeked lassies a-rollin in the ryegrass, “All Around My Hat” as the new national anthem …

If you’re a producer out there in TV la, la land you’d better move quick if you want to snap ‘em up (the mule, Frances, is clearly a star in the making).

I’ve even thought of a title for the programme … Rotation, Rotation, Rotation.

“Rudimentary illimitable sewerage? malformation, backstop carolyn.
Clog document millionaire? last, last lucy”

No I haven’t been channelling TS Eliot again. (Last time I tried that, I kept seeing women coming and going, talking about Michaelangelo – all rather weird.)

Instead, this deathless verse is but a fragment from one of the occasional spam emails we get here at FAP Towers; their random words apparently side-stepping our Baysian filters (and no, I don’t know what they are, I just read it somewhere).

Anyway one enterprising chap has turned all this auto-generated gibberish into something rather amazing.

Ladies and Gentlemen I give you the Spam Architecture of Alex Dragulescu:

From his Spam Architecture Website:

“The images from the Spam Architecture series are generated by a computer program that accepts as input, junk email. Various patterns, keywords and rhythms found in the text are translated into three-dimensional modeling gestures.”

So there you go. It seems that spam has its uses after all – it can be transformed into 3-D architectural gestures.

However to take this to its logical, if surreal, conclusion Mr Dragulescu should now build his aforementioned models … out of real Spam.

So to get him started, here’s one I made earlier. I call it ‘SpamHaus’:

Pssst! Fancy a real bargain? A property at well below its genuine market value? And how about nabbing it without using any of your own money?

Ok. Now find a few more cut-price lovelies, repeat the process, and you, me old mucka, will be well on your way to becoming a champagne sipping, Ferrari driving, villa-in-the-south-of-France-owning  … PROPERTY MILLIONAIRE!!!

If you’ve attended property investment shows in recent years you’ll know that what I describe above has been a much touted way of making mega bucks from bricks and mortar.

Two acronyms became buzz words in the trade: BMV and NMD – Below Market Value and No Money Down.

The cunning plan involved finding desperate sellers, buying at, say, 20 per cent below the market value, and then using a bridging loan to pay for the property.

You then remortgage the next day for the real market value and you have, in effect, generated instant equity. And bought a property using none of your own dosh. Nice!

In the boom times this made some people – mostly full-time professional investors - very rich indeed, but when Mortgage Express – the main lender providing the remortgaging service – pulled the plug, it was, many thought, RIP for NMD.

Or was it? Last week I received an email from Simon Zutshi, the man behind The Property Investment Network. It included a link to a report he’s written called, ominously, The Death Of Property Investing.

Zutshi is a bit of a guru – he’s written a best-selling book called Property Magic: How to Buy Property Using Other People’s Time, Money and Experience, is a regular at property investment events and runs seminars for would-be investors.

He’s long been a big advocate of the BMV/NMD route to riches and his report remains ferociously upbeat - the BMV/NMD folks sometimes sound like they’re recruiting you into a mysterious cult!

I’ve read the report and I can’t find much to quibble with in his argument that if you can get your hands on financing, now could be a very good time to buy. Bargains are available, rental demand is high and yields are on the up.

Absolutely right.

But what about the financing? Zutshi has less to say about this, though he does tantalise with the promise that he’ll soon be unveiling a crafty new way of making NMD remortgaging work - “My latest strategy leverages clever loopholes to overcome problems in the mortgage market..”

Hmmm. Haven’t seen any sign of that yet, and I do wonder if it’s really possible in the current credit-crunched climate - if any of you out there are buying using NMD, I’d be interested to hear how you’re doing it.

In the meantime, if you want to read a carefully sceptical assessment of NMD and BMV, I’d recommend David Lawrenson’s recent blogs on the subject – they’re sensible, down-to-earth and they highlight many of the potential pitfalls.

Someone tell the three little piggies to forget their straw, wood and brick houses because I’ve seen the future – and it’s all made of foam.

Already mushrooming up in Japan (where else?) these styrofoam houses are being touted as the solution to the world’s housing crisis. You know those polystyrene cups of tea you get from burger vans? These are made of the same stuff.

Developed by International Dome House Co, they’re quickly-assembled, customisable and cheap (around $30000), so they’re certainly ticking a lot of the sustainable housing boxes (and for those of you living on a faultline they’re earthquake-proof too), but I’m not entirely convinced about their environmental credentials.

Yes, they’re ridiculously well insulated, being made from, duh, foam insulation, but when everyone else seems to be moving away from petrochemical related products these foamy smurf homes would seem to be flying in the face of future sustainability.

Of course I could be wrong … and they are damn cute. Ahhh to hell with the environment, where do I sign?

(More information over at Pink Tentacle)

Camp fans, rejoice, for I have news that will be music to your ears: the former Von Trapp family residence has been turned into a hotel.

Yes indeed, the one time Austrian home of Maria, The Captain and The Kids is about to throw open its doors so that you too can leap around a gazebo, perform kitsch routines on the staircase, and sing about kittens and snowdrops to your heart’s content.

(Although I’m guessing the new owners might object should you decide to fashion a frock from the curtains…).

Villa Trapp, as the hotel is appropriately called, didn’t actually feature in the masterpiece that is The Sound of Music, the house having been procured by a religious order following its eventual release from the Nazis.

But devoted fans will recognise elements that were recreated for the film, such as the lake at the bottom of the garden where the nasty Baroness (booooo) flirted outrageously with the Captain, and the aforementioned gazebo where Lisle and Rolf (ssssss) had their first kiss.

Villa Trapp is due to open in October this year and is taking bookings from next month; however, in my own case, I suspect I may have to climb a few financial mountains before I can contemplate staying there.

Nevertheless, the lure of following in those famous footsteps is just too great to ignore so, as a very wise Mother Superior once advised, I will metaphorically ford streams and follow byways etc etc until I can afford my dream.

Here are the top 20 UK Areas and Regions that people searched for on FindaProperty.com during July.

Lordy! Strong words indeed from Trevor Kent with regards the government’s will they, won’t they debacle over stamp duty earlier this week.

I have to say when I heard one of the suggestions being mooted was a stamp duty ‘holiday’ – as opposed to outright abolition or reform– I raised a sceptical eyebrow.

So I was rather chuffed to hear that my humble opinion was shared by Mr Kent, one-time president of the National Association of Estate Agents (NAEA), and a man who certainly knows what he’s talking about.

Having now also embraced the world of broadcasting, commenting on various aspects of the property industry, he’s become famous not only for his vast knowledge, but also his wonderfully verbose – and hugely entertaining – style.

Not surprisingly, then, the Chancellor’s rather vague announcement about changes they may or may not make with regards to stamp duty sent Our Trevor into a hyperventilating rant.

Here’s an extract from the press release we received from his office; you can just picture those already florid cheeks turning a furious shade of purple…:

“Instead of launching a Grace Darling of a lifeboat to provide some succour to the millions drowning in negative equity and repossession threat, Chancellor Darling has pulled the plug on what’s left of the market by inept indecision and half promises.

“The few sales estate agents that have been nursing through over the last few weeks have dropped anchor this morning,  following asides from the bridge that the captain MIGHT reduce Stamp Duty, or holiday it, or even delay payment  to some future date, but that he’s ‘not yet decided’ when or how.

“I ask you, who’s going to proceed with a purchase if delaying a few weeks might mean the saving of certainly 1%, maybe 3% and perhaps even 4% of the purchase price?

“Colleagues in the industry I’ve spoken to are apoplectic over this final back-breaking straw as they see what was left of their turnover keel over.

“The man’s crazy. It’s now or never and it’s got to be now.”

Route 1 West in the real Anniesland-
not a pair of mouse ears in sight

Not content with sharing my name with an ingenious piece of eco design, I have just discovered, via a plug by Redrow for their Route 1 West  development, that there exists in Glasgow a district proudly bearing my moniker.

Anniesland - originally the name my troubled mind chose for my first settlement in the computer game Civilization - is in fact a Scottish reality, complete with real shops, real people and real homes.

I doubt, however, that it is ruled over by Queen Annie O’ The Ever-Knowing, who resides in a turreted castle and charges her devoted subjects 70 per cent in tax (look, it’s the quickest way to progress through the game…)

In fact, I know relatively little about the “real” place, other than it has a kickass name and features the aforementioned Redrow development.

If anyone wants to fill me in/ feed my narcissism/ deflate my ego, the comments box is ready and waiting…

I get regular news bulletins and opinion pieces from the excellent MoneyWeek, and they’re usually fairly feisty – especially when it comes to the housing market.

Last week John Stepek got in a right old strop when he read a piece in the FT suggesting that all is not lost because there is still a lot of pent-up demand for property. He dismissed this idea as idiocy:

“This idea of mortgage demand being like a vast reservoir only being held back by the dam of the credit crunch is quite appealing. But it makes no sense.

“‘Pent-up demand’ is a nonsense concept, economically speaking. Almost anyone will buy almost anything at the right price. You could say there’s a lot of pent-up demand for a Ferrari that costs less than £10,000. You could say there’s a lot of pent-up demand for free pizza.”

I’ve heard this Ferrari argument before, but I’m not so sure that it works. I agree with Stepek that demand depends on the ability to pay, but housing is, I think, more complicated than other consumer products for a number of reasons:

1. Property is not quite like other products because having a roof over your head is a necessity. I can get by without a car – even a cheap Ferrari - but I can’t get by without somewhere to live (either by buying or renting).

2. Property – unlike other products – can’t be picked up and moved to where demand is strongest. If demand for Ferraris surges in Brighton the cars can be brought there.

If demand for, say, family houses spikes, there’s a long drawn out process of finding suitable land, getting planning permission, satisfying government regulations about housing density and affordability quotas etc etc.

The supply of property is controlled by planning regulations and government dictat – why else all those new-build flats in city centres? The supply of consumer products is not nearly as constrained and can rise quickly to meet demand.

3. A car usually depreciates in value as soon as you drive it off the forecourt. A second hand house, on the other hand, generally rises in value - hence the surge in property investment.

These, fairly amateurish, musings on the subject lead me to conclude that while the recent housing boom was driven by cheap money, it was also driven by population trends, planning laws, historically low levels of house-building and a lack of confidence in other, err, investment vehicles.

The current downturn, based on an unprecedented credit squeeze, will ease once more normal lending practices are reinstated – and when that happens those underlying issues will still be in place and will, I think, renew the pressure on house prices.

But I’m sure there are lots of you out there who are about to tell me I’m deluded…

Shoreham Harbour

Last year (October 2007), I heard a rumour that a super-size me development could be sprouting forth from Shoreham Harbour.

This was hardly news to me, a coastal dweller whose daily commute requires travelling past the Harbour along the narrow and congested strip (the A259) between Shoreham and Brighton.

Back in 2003 the kibosh was put on a “media village” (advertiser speak for homes, shops, offices – the lot). The project was shelved because no-one was willing to stump up the £200 million needed to improve the A259.

So it was with a healthy does of scepticism that I greeted the news that the project has been revived and will result in 10,000 new homes landing more or less on my doorstep.

Apparently, though, I may be wrong, it appears that the wheels are well and truly rolling on this one and the developers, SEEDA (South East England Development Agency), have already been granted New Growth Point status for the Herculean project.

The New Growth will involve “a major urban extension” - 10,000 high density dwellings! Up to 7,750 new jobs! New retail and leisure facilities! You get the idea - it’s gonna be massive.

There’s still a long way to go, what with pesky details like planning approval to contend with, but what really caught my eye on this one is the transport issue.

To quote SEEDA, the project may include: “a package of high quality public transport improvements including an extension to the proposed (bus-based) Rapid Transit System link with Brighton & Hove and the Sussex Coast, and upgrades to the existing railway stations and rail services.”

Yes, I think it’s marvellous that more homes are coming to the Brighton area - I’ll probably be able to afford one myself in about 50 years time – but what’s going to happen to the A259 that stands between the current harbour and those all important transport links like railway stations, bus stops etc?

Hmm? Colour me confused but no amount of extra platforms and bus services can really change the logistics of a heaving road that runs between water and… well, everything else.

So by all means bring on the new houses, cinemas, shops, etc, but maybe invest in a water-taxi service at the same time.

Having said all that, while new homes could be cropping up within three years time, SEEDA concedes that the more major regeneration could take between 15-20 years.

Which I reckon is just about enough time in which to convince my boss about the joys of remote desk-topping.

You can read more about SEEDA’s plans here