Chris Thompson   Chris Thompson on the internet

Today has been a bit of a strange one.

After speaking with one of my oldest friends, who is trying to sell up and move down south, I’ve been reading up on the news on house prices and the housing market.

My friend bought the house a long time ago for something like £200,000, I think, and although it had gone up considerably a few years back when they flirted with the idea of selling, now it’s fallen down again. Which is strange, because apparently house prices finished 2009 around 4% higher than they started it.

But there are plenty of examples that this isn’t necessarily the case.

Here, for example, you can find dozens of examples of property prices falling, all collected neatly in the same place, as well as a number of slightly depressing predictions about when we can expect any kind of economic recovery.

You can check out repossession news, and finance market websites, you can get something of a picture to why such a recovery could be a long way off. Apparently up to 1 million UK households have used credit cards to pay for their house mortgages.

When we are at such a stage that we have to borrow so much money just to have a house to live in, it’s no wonder there are so many repossession problems. Despite a rise in online help, if you are in a situation where you are looking at remortgaging or repossession; despite investment companies offering ways to avoid repossession and stop repossessions, it can still be stressful and problematic. And it’s always worrying.

My friends are looking to move from Leeds down south, which will be good for me, because it means I can see them more. But it’s looking slightly more expensive for them than they were expecting. They’ve been looking out for mortgage deals already, of course, but it doesn’t mean that they’ve found any particularly striking ones.

Let’s hope that these predictions of a full economic recovery in 6 months time are correct.

New Years Eve and Day have vanished in a blur, and now here we are in a properly new year, staring 2010 in the face. Everyone is making their new year’s resolutions. Traditionally, of course, this is a time for change, a time for a fresh start, a time for renewal. This is a time to be the person you want to be. But some things, it seems, don’t change. I was browsing a list of property prices in 2010, and couldn’t help but notice that here, in the property market, things seem as horrible as ever.

I’m almost certain that I read something about house prices going up, and might have even blogged about it a while ago, sometime towards the end of last year. Some news story or hint or glimmer of hope that suggested change – of a good variety – was on the horizon. But evidently I remember wrong.

No matter how you look at it, things for our economy are still not looking good, and as a recent graduate, that’s quite a scary thought. I still know people who are looking for a job over a year out of university. There was a time when having a degree alone was enough, but not anymore.

All the word at the pub tonight was about mortgages, too – even mortgage rates are under the shadow of this repression, which, like the enemy in a horror movie seems to never go away.

Here’s hoping things pick up soon. Otherwise, it’s not much of a happy new year so far. It’s not just affecting property buyers and home buyers, it’s affecting everyone who works in the industry. I wouldn’t want to be one of our countries’ property investors if things continue this way. Or any countries’, for that matter. But I suppose you can say that about a lot of jobs, in these times.

Somehow I ended up reading this piece – I’m not sure how; just stumbled upon it, I suppose. But it held my attention, mostly because I found it a little bit strange. It’s all about the pains of the recession: losing your job, having problems with the mortgage, all that lovely stuff. Mostly, though, it runs over how to talk about such matters (or not to talk about it, for that matter) with your kids.

It’s a “how-to” on what you should let your children know, if you’re having problems in these difficult times. It tells you what you should say, and what you should avoid saying, to your children. And I can’t help but wonder what the point is.

It’s true that if you’re struggling with anything at all, your children have probably pricked up their ears and know something about it. But I would expect that, if they wanted to know any more about it, they would ask you the questions they want answered. And even if they don’t, is it not obvious that you probably don’t need to delve into your latest mortgage news?

It just seems a little strange that – just because mortgage rates are not the most appealing right now – there needs to be such an article telling us how to speak to our own family. If you got a bobby dazzling, beautiful new job, and it meant that you could instantly pay off your mortgage in the blink of an eye; even then, would you tell your kids that you have no more mortgage? Maybe, if they were of a certain age. Maybe, if they asked about it. But do they really need to know about such things? Will they even be interested in knowing about such things? They are much more likely to ask you about this new job.

And it’s not like there are no options. There are lot of home buyers out there that, even in a recession, will buy your house from you. And on top of that, often you don’t even need to leave your house after you’ve sold it. And there are always ways to sell for cash quickly, if you don’t want to wait around.

Everywhere around the world people are strapped for cash, because, as we are so constantly reminded, we are deep, deep, deep in a recession. People might do odd little bits and bobs on top of any work they’re lucky enough to have, working in their spare time in order to earn a bit of spare cash. And it strikes me that, if you’re smart about the way you do it, investing might be a good answer. If you’re thinking about it, it seems this is the place for investment news.

Stocks, bonds, and equities – heck, practically everything you can invest in will often be low, or cheap, or worth a shot. And although it might take longer than we all hope for, when the recession does finally start to go away, what is low now might not be so low in the future. It seems to make sense.

Of course, I’m no expert in this field, but I’d imagine you’d need to build up a few pennies in your savings account beforehand. Or even one of those offshore banking accounts I mentioned yesterday, which are supposed to be pretty good for ratings. But once you’re set, it’s probably worth a look.

You could invest in anything. Tesco, for example, or Google, or even invest in agriculture – there is, of course, a practically infinite amount of ways to do it. And there are people who make a perfectly nice living simply through buying and selling stock. So, with cleverness, it is probably quite a worthwhile thing to get acquainted with.

I don’t think today has been a very good one, as far as news goes anyway. And I suppose, when it comes down to it, it hasn’t been a good week for news, either. I found one story, which is still floating around here, about someone who has set fire to their own car with a discarded cigarette butt. If you need a good reason to stop smoking, you have one there: if you’re not careful, you could blow yourself up.

Of course, such dark happenings must be the result of global warming. That is, after all, what seems to cause everything these days. Just the other day, I wrote about sheep shrinking in Scotland, and how they’re blaming it on global warming. It’s hot, and it’s not summer, it’s global warming. It rains, and it’s global warming. The other day I walked through Colchester in such a good mood that I went to my bank account, and, in the process of getting some money out of the cash machine, left before I had even taken the money. I took the card, and strolled off without a second thought. Of course, this is something that would happen at all banks if you’re as foolish as I was – but I was eager, excited, and probably too tired. So I strolled off, despite the insistent beeping of the machine, and someone had a very nice surprise awaiting them on the high street. And that, too, was probably global warming.

I decided to skim read the local paper, it was so riddled with gloom. Low credit ratings were as heavily featured as the football reports, and there is always a lot of football to report. It made for rather depressing reading. There were some reviews of films showing at the local arts theatre, and a handful of other light-hearted things, but they couldn’t do much to penetrate the brooding cloud of the recession.

The only real light at the end of the tunnel – or so one advert said – was to look into off shore bank accounts in order to get your savings on track. That’s when you know it’s a dull read.

This morning, just as I got back from a walk with the dogs, the local newspaper came through the door. On the front page was a very gloomy, very big picture of a house, and an accompanying story of how bad the house market is looking at the moment. As you might expect, the whole thing was filled with news of the recession; now a sort of endless, brooding, dark cloud that is swallowing our lives.

I decided, after seeing it, that I’d look it up a little bit online, and see if it really is moving as slowly as the article said it was. And there are all sorts of property news websites online – it’s great for that sort of thing. Rather interestingly, there are a number of similar sounding stories there as well. Including one that says, rather darkly, that house prices are set to fall even further over the next 18 months or so, and aren’t going to get better until around 2015. It must be hell, with such low property prices, if you are trying to sell. Certainly not a nice time to be dealing with it all.

That doesn’t mean there aren’t options out there. If you’re looking for a quick house sale, then there are still ways to do it. I suppose it might come with the slight downside that you’ll have to settle for less money … but it could be something of a blessing to get rid of your house so quickly, especially in a market like the current one. Sitting around, trying to sell, only to run into the metaphorical brick wall over and over again can only add to the depression.

And there are forums, too: real estate forums, and all sorts, that are all there to help out if you do find yourself immersed in this sort of thing. And they are a brilliant thing, because they put you in direct contact with other, similar people who are also going through the same thing that you’re going through.

Yes, the internet can be such a marvellous thing sometimes.