The problem with email is the bland way that it conveys your messages without actually conveying the smirk on your face as you write it, the cheeky little twinkle in your eye or the sarcasm you would have said it with. As a result, alot can be misread and some can take offence when nothing could have been further from the truth.
I guess that is why in much online writing and message boards many use the kind of annotation symbols I used to find rather annoying but have now embraced with glee, you know the ones; lol, 
:-0)* (no idea on the last one, but you get the idea).
As I trudged cautiously through the deep snow in freezing Hertfordshire it warmed the cockles of my heart to think of the New Year ahead and wonder what opportunities will present themselves.
A return of competition to the mortgage market, a rise in interest rates, further property price increases, the return of first-time buyers, a new Government, a world cup win? There are many questions to ponder.
At the moment I am sitting in Houston Texas where they have just experienced something extremely unusual, a snowstorm. There were alot of very excited people yesterday taking pictures and the TV dubbed it “Blizzard 2009″ with almost blanket coverage. Today, though things have calmed down and I have been trying to make sense of what the rest of the news is all about.
Talk on the economy has really been dwarfed this week by, of all things, and as our waitress this morning so eloquently put it, by Tiger bloody Woods. Seriously, it is wall to wall coverage now the blizzard is done.
The latest rumblings of discontent around the financial community have been centred around the issues that beset Dubai, the land where dreams have been built, quite literally, in the sand.
Unfortunately, the sand seems to be capricious ground at best, and another wave of banking losses have been predicted, with reports of anything around the $40 to $50 billion level being the amount that European banks are exposed to. Then again what’s this piddly amount between friends after the recent figures we have seen bandied around?
It was refreshing to see a few days ago that there is to be another enquiry into the mortgage industry and why lenders are not lending more – refreshing in a dry glass of hot sawdust type of way!
They are going to investigate in-particular, “the sharp rise in repossessions and the chronic shortage of affordable home loans for first-time buyers”.
Brilliant. Is that really the best that the Government can come up with? A cross-party committee of MP’s wagging fingers at bankers and telling everyone what they are doing wrong whilst they try to keep their latest expenses form under wraps!
Andrew Montlake, Communications Director at Coreco and ‘Mortgage Personality of the Year 2008’, gives his views — honest and no holds barred — on the latest developments within the mortgage and property markets.
