By Neil Lewis

The key question that we are left with at the end of 2008 is what went wrong? Or perhaps we should really ask ourselves: what went right?

2008 was the year when the wheels fell off the global banking system and a regional problem that began in the US became an international issue. The problems then spilt out from the banking sector to all economic sectors and that then spread across the world.

From our property investment perspective, it was obvious that the UK was in trouble early in 2008. We realised that things were going to get worse before they got better and we moved from general caution about new investments in the UK at the beginning of the year to advising clients by April to stay out of new UK property investment.

The UK property market has continued to fall and there is now some expectation that the bottom will be reached in 2009, although we remain cautious about getting into this market too soon.