The latest beta of Windows came out last weekend… and I don’t care. Yes, I downloaded it as soon as I could. Yes, I’ve installed it on a virtual machine. Yes, Microsoft has declared “Beta Keys for Everyone”, so the world should be running on Windows 7 Beta – but no, I just don’t care.

The Washington Post has a nice, well balanced review of Windows 7. I advise you to read it, since it’s taken a fairly mature approach of looking at how the average user will feel about the upgrade. Instead of looking at one particular feature and either screaming abuse or singing its praises, David Murphy has tried to cover the breadth of changes and how they really impact him.

Part of the problem is that I’ve just got used to Vista. I’m now comfortable with the sidebar taking up a valuable two inches of my screen real-estate, and I haven’t had an un-expected UAC prompt in months (yes, it is still enabled; but I’m used to – nay, demand – the extra confirmation when I perform a proper administrative task).

I’d still like to see what Windows 7 would look like fully powered on my machine – having only run it in a VM situation so far, I haven’t had a chance to play with the proper shiny effects – but it’s not my number one priority. Sorry Microsoft!

Just for a moment, let’s pretend that this blog has tens – or even hundreds – of thousands of readers, all of whom are interested in buying a new car in the next 6 months.  Further, let’s pretend that all of these readers like and respect my opinion – maybe they’ve been reading the blog for years, and have come to trust me.  I know – it’s a hell of a stretch – but it’s always good to give your imagination a work-out now and again.

Okay – now that I have the rapt attention of a few hundred thousand readers, I have an announcement for you all.  Car prices are too high – the fact is, the dealerships are making a vast profit – 200% or more – and the second hand car dealers are all selling the cars for at least twice what they’re worth.  The good news though is that the dealerships aren’t going to get away with this for long, so make sure you hold out for a really good deal next time you buy.

Now, I know that this isn’t true.  But if I go and tell 100,000 people – who all believe me – that this is the case, and they all go to their car dealerships with that in mind, one of three things are going to happen to each of these customers:

1. The dealer will laugh at them, explain the truth, and get a sale – but the customer will probably still think he’s been ripped off.
2. The dealer will refuse to give such a huge discount, and not get a sale
3. The dealer will cave – scared of losing a sale – and sell the car at a fairly big discount.

Now, this means in around two thirds of cases, my announcement above is being re-inforced – either the customer gets the discount (and tells all his friends that prices really are dropping), or the dealer is getting less sales, and finds he has to start dropping his prices to stay competitive.

Let’s move on – I don’t have that high a readership, and you certainly don’t all trust my opinion that much… but there are those that do.  If a respected journalist – or maybe Jeremy Clarkson – made that announcement, I predict that car sales would initially slow (as people decided to wait and see if it was true), and then the prices would start to plummet.

This is what I believe has happened to the housing market.  Journalists, somewhere, got wind of a “house prices aren’t rising as fast as they were” story, and decided to exaggerate it to make a headline.  The public, reading “House prices might start falling”, decided to wait a little before their next purchase – which led to the house sellers having to drop the prices to get a sale.  Lo and behold, house prices have fallen – and who knows if the initial impetus was anything other than a poorly researched article in the Sun?

There’s another factor too.  Let’s say that in December 2007, only 10 houses were sold – 9 of them for £200,000, and one for £5,000,000.  December this year, again 10 houses are sold – 9 normal ones for around £300,000, and again a mansion for £2,000,000.  What’s happened to the average house price?  Well, last year it was £680,000 – but this year, despite the rise in price of the typical house, it’s only £470,000…

Obviously, the quantities are tiny – but the fact remains that even if only 10% of houses have abnormally high prices, these could easily skew the statistics to show a drop in house prices where none really exists.

I am now going to start a new project – to see the real impact of the “collapse of the housing market”.  Thanks to sites like Our Property and Right Move, we can now see exactly what house prices are doing over the course of a few months.  Let’s see if the doom-sayers are right – or if it’s all a bunch of bull-shit statistics.