Amid Scandal and Mayhem Property Clings on

Reports are coming in from across the UK that property bargain hunters are out in force. There are a number of reasons for this.

Spring is just around the corner. It’s been coy – burying itself beneath snow drifts. But as the weather improves this is the time of the year when Brits usually become property-minded. Today, however, unusual conditions prevail and the property sector has been tossed by storms that were unimagined a year ago.

There is now a sense that the fall in property prices is beginning to bottom out. Anybody with cash will be horrified by the blood-bath in stocks and shares. Nobody trusts the banks. Bankers have become pariahs. There’s no point in sticking your loot in a bank account because it will just wilt away earning little or nothing in interest.

So if you are King Cash what do you do with your lolly? You can play safe and stick it in a hole in your garden. But it won’t grow.

There’s a saying which emanates from porters at Billingsgate. Cod goes off – property doesn’t. Though there has been plenty of stinking fish. Ask hard-pressed developers in places like Birmingham or Manchester. Or householders trapped by negative equity.

If you have the money property is still the best bet in a lousy range of choices. Latest reports from letting and renting agents suggest that contrary to much doom and gloom which is being bandied about rents are still robust to high – especially in London.

It’s true that some people cannot sell and are choosing to rent out their properties instead. So you could argue that with more properties available rents would fall. But the counter argument – just as credible - is that more people are choosing to rent rather than to buy. They are biding their time until the turbulence in the market subsides.

So who are these new renters? Some of those who are keeping rents robust are first time buyers. They are trying to save the hefty deposits which lenders now demand. Others are waiting to see if the market will fall further. Others who were shrewd sold their properties at the top of the boom. They then ran off with their winnings and are now sitting in rented accommodation on a mountain of cash while they try to call the bottom of the market.

The last group – the cash-squatters who are renting – have a problem on their hands. Calling the bottom of any market is always difficult. It requires strong nerves, a reserve of money, and a proper appreciation of the myriad factors which can spell volatility.

The professionals among them are taking the plunge or are about to. It is sufficient for them to think the sector is ten to twelve per cent off the absolute bottom of the market. They will have calculated that if they can snap up a bargain – a property in a reasonable area perhaps in need of refurbishment – even if its value slips by another12 per cent they will still be sitting pretty if they have done their sums properly and bought shrewdly.

They also know that if they dither and wait until what they think is the absolute bottom of the market they will almost certainly miss some of the cracking bargains on offer today.

This adds to the frustration of first time buyers. Professionals and cash buyers will pip first-timers in snaffling up the real bargains. Buy-to-let landlords encouraged by the way rents are holding up in London are coming back with a vengeance.

While the first-timers are busy saving up their chunky deposits the professionals are in and out like jack-rabbits and moving on to their next bargain.

It is high-time that the government forced – persuasion clearly has no effect – lenders into freeing up the mortgage market. The resuscitation of the property sector is vital if any sense of confidence is to come back into the economy.

But there are many other Feel-Bad-Reasons for instability in the property sector. People are terrified of losing their jobs. They are angered by the brazen bankers whose bacon has been saved by the tax payer. They are sickened by Peers who have their snouts in the trough. The perks scandal involving financial corporations and Whitehall mandarins has added to a sense that Britain has become diseased and vulgar at the highest level.

Revelations about politicians – even Cabinet Ministers – playing the expenses game for every brass farthing have sent out an extraordinarily depressing message to the UK.

One gives thanks for the Fourth Estate. At least the world’s oldest democracy still has nosy, inquiring, trouble-making, vigorous journalism. Without it none of the deeply unpleasant revelations would have come to light. Certain newspapers are taking the role of the Opposition. The real Opposition looks pale and neutered in comparison.

The numerous disclosures – which can give the distinct impression that Britain has become rotten with corruption from top to toe – do not, in fact, claim illegality. What they raise are questions about ethics, morality, the observance of ordinary decency and propriety. There is a brazenness about those who sit on the levers of power in the UK.

In politics and every aspect of public life perception is everything. And the perception has become one of rottenness, of leaders on the make, of people who bend the rules to their own advantage, people who are greedy and grasping and who will never, ever, resign, no matter how much they are shamed in the newspapers or on television.

It is only when such matters are properly addressed – and it’s no use the government saying that yet another committee is being set up to look into them – that sectors such as property which are vital to Britain’s economy will begin to come back into their own.