Housing

One of the current family favourites is A Squash and a Squeeze, a CD-audio book by Julia Donaldson and Axel Scheffler. The same tale is told in Jean-Claude Carriere's Le Cercle des menteurs: Tome 2, Contes philosophiques du monde entier, which I received at my last birthday (thank you Christine). The concept is based on relativism: if you think your home is small, fill it until it is completely packed, and then it will seem "gigantic" when only the original occupants are left. We recently experienced this at our own place. From four occupants, we were suddenly eight at home on a Sunday evening: our house seemed very spacious on the Thursday morning our guests left, and our children came across as the most quiet and well-behaved that evening.

In France, the property development group Kaufman & Broad made a profit warning this morning, blaming a weak domestic market and banks' reluctance to award mortgages. The group only launched just over 2,500 new housing progammes in the first half of 2008, 45% fewer than in the first half of 2007. According to the daily newspaper La Tribune, French developers expect a 15% to 20% decline in new home sales in 2008, followed by another decline in 2009.

On the other side of the Channel, the biggest mortgage lender HBOS (Halifax) expects the number of new mortgage transactions to fall by 45% this year. House prices are to fall by 9% in 2008. But the Financial Times reports that John Paulson, famed for his foresight in US subprime mortages, thinks the worst is yet to come for the UK housing market: for those of us looking for a bargain, this could be mean waiting for months "or even a couple of years." In the meantime, invite plenty of friends every now and then, and enjoy the sense of spaciousness when they have departed.