After eighteen months of the harshest peacetime trading conditions in the UK property market for sixty years Nick Churton, Managing Director of Mayfair Office dares to look forward and sees a great opportunity.

Already we are being served up with plenty of ‘expert’ opinions about how much further the property market will drop, when the market will turn and how long any period of recovery will take.  From newspaper and broadcast journalists to eminent economists, they all have something to say.  Even one or two estate agency research departments have jumped in with their two-pennyworth.  The trouble is, not one of them seems to agree.  This is hardly surprising as none of them is a clairvoyant and none has ever encountered this sort of crisis before.  So, no matter how expert anyone thinks they are, nobody really knows. 

But with so many people conjecturing different things - and by the law of averages one of them eventually will get it right - forecasting seems to be a rather fruitless exercise.  Like polls before elections, perhaps it is best just to wait and see. 

But we local property experts do know a thing or two.  We know, in the end, the market and prices will recover.  We also have a bit of a feel for how things are in our own markets today, and this helps us to give some timely advice that many of these other commentators can’t.  So here are some things to consider. 

Now is the time to buy property - interest rates are falling and could yet go to their lowest ever. 

Now is the time to buy property - prices have fallen dramatically.  (They could fall further but it’s never smart to wait until they are rising.) 

Now is the time to buy property - there is so much choice in the market and it will be years before there is again. 

Now is the time to buy property - sellers are in an autumnal depression and it will be a long hard economic winter.   (Sellers are always more optimistic in the spring.) 

Now is the time to buy property - there is great turmoil in the financial world.  In chaos there is opportunity. 

Now is the time to buy property - the financial institutions are just recovering from their credit difficulties and are beginning to offer mortgages again. 

Now is the time to move up market - prices have come down further pro rata. 

Now is the time to buy your first home - prices are at their lowest for years. 

Now is the time to buy–to-let - prices have slumped and rents have risen. 

Now is the time to buy new property.  If ever there was a time builders and developers will take a low offer for a quick sale this is it. 

Now is the time to buy - not when things have changed for the better.  Then it will be too late to take full advantage of current opportunities. 

Now is the time that you have always dreamed of - the time when you are ahead of the curve.  The time that you know it’s right to buy: when you can make the smart move while many others don’t. 

Now is the time.  There may yet be a further fall in property values and the upturn may still be many months away, but if you are in property for the medium or long term the future benefits should heavily outweigh any short-term loss. 

Now is not the time to buy if you have to borrow too much money or are worried about your job or the financial wellbeing of your family. 

But otherwise the time to buy property is now.