"THE HOUSING MARKET IS RECOVERING"

Our company is the exclusive representative of the Homesale Network for this area. The Largest Relocation Company in the World of which their Estate Agency Arm represents some 750 plus independent Estate Agency offices across the country. The relocation company is called Cendant Mobility and handles in the region of 55% of the relocating employees across the country, an association of which we are very proud. We recently attended the Homesale Network annual conference in London which we are informed is the biggest residential property conference that takes place in Europe presently. The star guest was the Chief Economist at the HSBC bank, Dennis Turner. His opinion for the market place in 2006 is that nationally house prices should rise somewhere in the region of 5% for the year, he mentioned this in conjunction with his own thoughts that he felt interest rates, controlled by the monetary policy committee will probably fall by as much as a quarter percent per quarter throughout the year meaning we should have interest rates a whole 1% lower than today by this time next year.

This is of course is excellent news for the market and house buyers, in fact us all, and perhaps particularly first time buyers, hopefully providing more affordability for them to join the housing market. Dennis Turner did however make the point that the consumer debt that the nation is carrying and inflationary pressures that prevail will keep a lid on the market and why he put his estimation at around 5%.

I think it is fair to say that we can claim to live in one of the Country's Property Hotspots! The South Manchester market continues to remain strong despite the recent changes in the market particularly in the second half of 2004. With that said we at Snapes look forward to the market in 2006 and relish the prospects that this will bring us and our clients.

We as a company whilst looking forward to the 2006 market are also trying to make our Property For Sale as accessible as is feasibly possible by continuing to extend our Internet coverage. By monitoring the way in which buyers register with our company we can now tell that in the region of one in two of every potential buyer looking for property with us uses the internet and would prefer to be kept informed of property movements by our ‘Red Hot' Email List. It is with this in mind that we have extended our coverage in 2005 to include rightmove.co.uk which is the Largest Property Portal in this country. We have also subsequently added propertyfinder.com which is the fast growing and Second Largest Property Portal in the country which we feel will give us the added extra edge in terms of our Internet coverage. These are in addition of course to our present website and also other sites that we use such as fish4homes.co.uk and also two further sites that we shall be uploading to shortly, nethouseprices.com which we think will become live at some time in early 2006 and also topagents.co.uk . similalry.

For further information please contact;

Bramhall - Andrew Snape Estate Agents 0161 440 8700 or email bramhall@snape-estates.com

Cheadle Hulme - Andrew Snape Estate Agents 0161 485 2244 or email cheadle@snape-estates.com

Snape Lettings - 0161 485 2444 or email lettings@snape-estates.com