CHRISTMAS has come early to the offices of many estate agents. But no-one is prematurely downloading festive party hits onto their iPod or putting up the decorations. For, in some locations, the seasonal lull that usually overtakes the housing market in mid-December arrived in mid-October.

Inquiries from buyers, sales and new instructions are all down, according to the Royal Institution of Chartered Surveyors’ (RICS) monthly interrogation of its members. The boss of one firm in Frome, Somerset, even exhorts his peers to “go out to your vendors and lower their expectations”.

Others are more sanguine. The RICS survey includes accounts from Battersea, Edinburgh, Harrogate, Lincolnshire and South Lakeland of healthy interest in realistically-priced properties.

Meanwhile, status homes almost everywhere seem almost immune to the sub-prime malaise that has spread from the US, cutting off the supply of easy loans. Cheap apartments in Liverpool may have little pulling power, but the £1.5 million penthouses in the city’s hip new Unity building have become the latest rich boys’ toy and not because the tower’s architectural style has been likened by some to Lego.

BACKGROUND

• Opening bids - Is it Christmas already? Tell Santa to break out a rate cut without further delay?

• Which economists will win the contest to be the gloomiest over the future for prices?

• Which camp are you in - storm clouds or showers? Even the experts are split

• Opening bids - a year in property

BACKGROUND

• Opening bids: Why the Government must do something about Britain’s empty properties

• Will there be a rate cut before Christmas? Kate Barker knows - but she’s not telling

• Downturn and downtown in 2008: how investors in UK city-centre flats may feel the chill first

• Opening bids

Sub-prime slime is oozing out everywhere from the US -where will it spread next?

BACKGROUND

• Comment: The housing shortage

• Ripple effect from Belgravia to the suburbs

• Comment: the property market slowdown

• Tax perks for a few are adding to the property have-nots’ sense of injustice, but don’t expect reform any time soon

• This was not a timely retreat. What does the government now mean to do to save the planet?

The silencing of our Mr Spocks

Our public administration has specialised in low-level, chronic inefficiency with a counterpoint of big talk

BACKGROUND

• Average prices in the South are 1.59 times higher than the North

• The City’s ardour for status homes remains unabated

• The dawn of a more eco-conscious Britain may be delayed

• It's bonus time, let the stampede begin

• Prices and politics either side of the border

Hips will make us greener, or so the Government says

• Hips have already won hearts and minds and will make us all greener, or so the Government says

BACKGROUND

• Mortgage competition makes millions immune to base-rate moves

• Hidden costs of a place in the sun

• Primark Principle revises gloomy views

• Going green is not cheap

Even the most downhearted RICS members do not report any panic selling, confirming the suspicion that there lies ahead not a price slump but a period of stagnation, with the number of transactions subsiding.

Meanwhile, after the signal from the Bank of England that interest rates could be cut next year, some people are already looking beyond the slowdown, trying to spy out the locations that could be the first to start moving upwards again – or become the next hotspots. Savills research out today cites Cricklewood, Tulse Hill and White City as the next candidates for chic urban village status.

There may be predictions of further deterioration in the US housing market: sub-prime problems are emerging even in affluent suburbs, with white-collar worker homeowners becoming unable to meet their mortgage repayments and facing repossession. But UK investors with strong nerves are seeking bargains in Arizonia, California and Florida, as we report on pages 6-7. These are the states in which prices collapsed first and so could be those where prices first stabilise.

There is, of course, also potential for further falls in the values of properties such as one Florida condo, marketed at $440,000 two years ago and now for sale for $275,000. But, thanks to the dollar’s decline, the price of this condo to a British buyer is £137,500, and there will be many who think all their Christmases have come.

CHEQUES AND BALANCES

The price of oil is a controversial subject, which may be why the Government has not yet used the rise to nearly $100 a barrel to highlight the value of the energy performance certificate (EPC). This is the key component of the home information pack (Hip), which must now be supplied when a property of three bedrooms or more is put up for sale.

The EPC grades a home’s energy efficiency, giving it a grade from A (faultlessly eco-conscious) to G (environmental menace), which a purchaser should use to assess a property’s running costs. The EPC should be particularly useful as a guide to the bills for one of 3.5 million country homes that use oil for heating.

But a letter to The Times from a trainee domestic energy assessor, the person who compiles the EPC, suggests that buyers should beware. This would-be assessor discovered on her course that no checks were made as to whether the details of EPCs submitted by students matched the properties involved.

These disclosures will increase the scepticism that already surrounds the Hip project. The EPC was designed to help to save the planet. It would be a shame if it acquired the reputation only of yet another piece of bureaucracy.

TOO MUCH COFFEE

One of the unexpected aspects of my job is an overexposure to beige. The interiors of properties in high price brackets are now almost all decorated in the Starbucks palette of latte, mocha and cappuccino. This decor, influenced by the styling of deluxe hotels, is designed to create a neutral background onto which a potential buyer can project his or her own personality. But it will be interesting to see whether this cool and anonymous look will survive the new trend for staying put: new Capital Economics’ research indicates the tendency to move less was becoming more pronounced even before the market slowdown.

Marks & Spencer seems already to have calculated that the spread of staying put could lead to demand for more colour and warmth. The chain’s spring and summer 2008 homewares collection, unveiled this week, featured red, blues, greens and even some patterned upholstery, alongside the mochachino. If beige does give way to colour, you will be the first to know. anne.ashworth@thetimes.co.uk

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