Yesterday we looked at trends in BMV investing. My personal colours are nailed to the mast - play the waiting game until Spring/Summer 2009 when the institutional money rides back into property. This is what I said back in October:

OK, property might not going great guns on the capital appreciation front in the short term recession profits can be made.

but let’s not forget that as an asset class, the yields are looking pretty good and
How will these be impacted by the interested rate cuts in the UK?

Reaction to Banks
* Independent: When in doubt, blame the banks Dominic Lawson gives an alternative view to the Government and media obsession with dropping interest rates.from Houseprice Crash
* The banks have said that they are reviewing their Standard Variable
Rates (SVR) although it is highly unlikely that any of the banks will
announce if their decision on passing on the 1.5 percent rate cut today. HSBC reporting that they may not announce their decision until Monday.
* “I’m a homeowner, will I benefit from the cut? About 50 per cent of
existing mortgages are fixed rate deals which will not benefit from the
cut, 40 per cent are…” from the FT
* Yesterday’s sizeable and surprising cut in the bank base rate comes at
an interesting point in the housing market. Whether it becomes a
turning point, however, is dependent on various other factors,
including whether our semi-nationalised banks do the decent thing or
“do a Millwall” (as in the chant favoured by this club’s supporters:
“No one likes us, we don’t care”). from the Times Online
* The Anning family are among the millions of borrowers who immediately
benefited from yesterday’s one and a half percentage point Bank of
England base-rate cut. Anyone who has a tracker, or is due to take out
one, will notice a huge fall in repayments - £133 a month off an
average loan. from the Times Online
* Monetary Policy Committee chose not to act to alleviate what to some was an obvious storm gathering argues Damian Reece
* Investors will breathe a sigh of relief that the Bank of England
Monetary Policy is in fact in touch with the reality and I’m impressed
with the action they’ve taken rather than the usual wait and see. from Brett Wood YPC
* Finally Mervyn and the MPC woke up - The Base Rate cut was savage as we said (Stuart Law)
* Base rate cut to 3% (Juswant Rai)
* Interest rates were just cut by a massive 1.5%. I think most people
were expecting 0.5-1%. Great news for people on tracker mortgages. 3%
is the lowest since 1955. (property investment project)

Future Rate Forecasts
* Bloomberg: Zero Rate World May Lie Ahead as King, Trichet Cut (Update1)
As major central banks slash interest rates with unexpected speed,
benchmark borrowing costs are now below core inflation for the first
time since the early 1980s, and policy makers are signaling they will
go deeper. from Houseprice Crash

Impact on Savings
* Savers will miss out as banks and building societies have began withdrawing attractive savings deals. from the Telegraph

House Price Forecasts
* Times: Five experts predict how much further prices will fall
When will the house price crash end and how far will prices fall?
Should buyers grab a bargain now, or wait another year, or even longer.
Times Money asked five experts for their predictions on how far prices
will fall before they reach rock bottom.
Martin Ellis (Halifax): -10% Jonathan Davis (Housepricecrash.co.uk):
-35% Yolande Barnes (Savills): -10% Nick Bate (Merril Lynch): -10%
Nicholas Leeming (Propertyfinder.co.uk): -10% from Houseprice Crash
* Is this really a crash or just a blip? from Rod Thomas
* Capital Economics forecasts
* UK house prices fell by 2.2% in October, bringing the average price back to the level in October 2005 at £168,031 from Housefund
* BBC News: Facing up to house price deja vu Faced with a nosedive in UK house prices, some homeowners are suggesting we learn from the past to prepare for the future.

Economy
* Economists predict that the interest rate cut from the Bank of England
could be too much too late, and warn that we may have further cuts some
even say taking the interest rate to zero.
* I have a feeling that this recession is going to be deep and very long and unlike what I have experienced in the last 37 years. from Investment Blog]
* Some thoughts on surviving the credit crunch, which is more about mindset than anything else.
* Deleveraging - a word we’re going to hear more of in the BMV world
* What’s next? Ask George Soros