I’ve got a feeling in my bones that this is going to be a good week for all of us. (well maybe not all of us but most of us)

A new world has just opened or so it seems with the election of Obama, the first black/mixed race president of America….

And finance has been off the front of the news bulletins for several days because of the American elections. Plus later this morning the Bank of England meet to decide what the interest rate should be. Its got to go down!!!

Its amazing that when there is no “Bad Financial News”, or its buried in page 5, people start to get more confidence about buying property.

I have had several brand new clients this week, who do not seem care about the credit crunch. The fact is that they have seen houses they want and they are going to buy them.

They have put in sensible offers, the owners understand that the market has shifted downward and have reduced prices and its a win win for all concerned.

Now of course the American elections are over, the media will do its best to shake our confidence by bringing us a daily drip of bad news. Already the news today is new car sales are down 23% on last year and there’s another report from the Halifax “The average price of a home in the UK was £168,176 in October, compared with almost £200,000 in the same month last year, representing a bigger annual fall than the 13.4pc drop recorded in September”.

Yes it just goes on and on…

Now I appreciate that news has to be reported but… its the number of “Experts” that comment on the market that shakes our confidence. The Newspapers have to fill their pages, the editors crack the whip and the journalists have to find a story…I know thinks, the journalist responsible for “house news” I’ll check my roladex and find one of my experts, phone him/her up, get a comment and build a story that’ll last a few days.

As I have said before, I know many people with businesses that are still doing OK, in fact some are doing great.

People still need to move, people have circumstances that change and need to sell their property, people want to buy a house to live in to call their own and all this hyping up in the media, just does not help anyone.

I still think that this is a good week and if interest rates go down by .5% or even 1.00% later today, it will be an even better week especially for all those people wanting to change mortgages or buy a new house.

In America, the Fed has cut its interest rates by half-point to 1 percent, there have also been cuts in China and Norway…..….Now that’s what I’m talking about.

I’m not an economist, but is seems daft that the bank of England are taking so long to cut interests rates in this country. At 4.5% with a review on 6th November.

Believe it or not, the number of new mortgages approved in September rose..(33,000 in fact) after an all time low on approvals in August. Some experts believe however that this could be down to the changes in stamp duty. We will see..

Now according to the Nationwide, house prices in the UK have now fallen for the twelfth consecutive month.

They say that property prices fell by 1.4% in the last month, taking the annual rate of fall up from 12.4% to 14.6%. As a result, £27,000 has been wiped off the value of a property, taking the average cost of a home to £158,872.

But…..the Land Registry has said that annual house prices in England and Wales have fallen 8%, while it posted a monthly fall of 2.2% in September.

This takes the average property to £168,814, according to the Land Registry.

SO WHO DO YOU BELIEVE…Too many experts… and Nationwide, like many other large companies have journalists, who feed other journalist from the newspapers with a drip of stories.

Why, because they have got to sell newspapers, mind you I think Nationwide do tend to whoop it up a bit, you know, sensationalise things more than most. They must have journalists sitting around brainstorming “How are we going to get in the papers tomorrow”

But to get this mortgage market going again, we need to see lower interest rates, I’m not suggesting an immediate cut of 1 or 2%, because that probably cause more problems than it solves. But over the next 4-6 month lets hope that Bank of England can do something in that direction.

After all, if your are on a tracker mortgage and many of my clients are, you could see your mortgage fall dramatically.Or if you get a new mortgage and are able to get it at a lower rate than it is now, you will have more money in your pocket.

And of course this means that you will have more  money over at the end of the month to spend in the shops, restaurants and other businesses to help get this economy going again.

Take care

Michael