We've decided to revive an old tradition here at Property Secrets - the award for the week's most misleading headline!

We started the contest a few years back - way back, actually - when there seemed to be a never ending flurry of headlines basically predicting the end of the world.

And yet, often, if you were one of the few people who actually read the text, you'd find that the doomsday headline presided over copy that said something rather different.

No one's denying that there are serious economic problems out there: plenty, in fact, from credit squeezes, to rising inflation, probably followed by many of the major economies facing rapid growth slowdown and recession.

And property markets in developed economies look, well, a little sickly right now. Never has our advice to consider property investment as a long term venture been so apposite.

But there is nothing like some ugly numbers to bring out those two ultra-enthusiastic writers, Messers Doomsday and Armageddon.

When things are bad, they like to make out they're catastrophic and, more scarily, that there will be no end, no upturn. It's into the abyss time.

We've been in this territory before, of course. Who can forget that award winning splash in the London Standard in 1999, quoting 'experts' advising everyone in London to sell up and rent NOW!

The Economist, no less, did it, too, in 2003. They used the p/e ratio as used to value equities, applied it to property (misguidedly), and advised everyone to sell and rent too.

Nice one! Great advice! How to lose out on around 100% growth with one lousy decision.

Of course, UK property prices are falling, and fast - no one's denying that. But they are falling on very low volumes because as employment is (so far) still high, people in large numbers are not being forced to sell.

Anyway, that's old news.

Now, media attention will increasingly turn to markets other than the obvious ones of the US, UK, Spain and Ireland, where we know there's a steep slide.

In fact, it already has turned. We spotted a great piece in MoneyWeek. As the headline was, 'Worst is Yet to Come for Eastern Europe', you can imagine it aroused our interest.

Well, it's one way of attracting attention - write a headline that bears no relation to the story.

'After years of strong growth and stronger spending in the ex-communist countries, life is about to get tough for consumers,' said the strap line.

But actually, no. What the article said was that Latvia, Estonia and Lithuania were in for a tough time because of their ultra inflationary wage rises and consumer spending binges. We agree with that.

But these are small states in Eastern Europe. What about the bigger economies - Poland, Czech, Slovakia, Romania and the smaller Bulgaria?

Despite the dire headline, the article surprised us. It agreed with us entirely!

Admittedly, you had to scan to the latter part of the piece to find the commentary on these bigger and far more significant markets, but it was there.

Czech, Poland and Slovakia - "....suffer least from the imbalances and deficits that threaten most of the region, and their growth has largely come from productive investment, rather than overheated, debt-fuelled consumer-spending binge or an asset-price bubble. Growth will slow, but overall effects will be fairly mild."

The worst is yet to come, eh.

What about Romania and Bulgaria? Dire straits? Er, not really...

"The consensus on Bulgaria and Romania sees them slowing from their current 6% growth, but remaining fairly strong."

Which is exactly what we've been saying for months!

The small and clearly over-leveraged economies of Latvia, Lithuania and Estonia, as well as CEE's sick man economy, Hungary, are exceptions.They have a rough time ahead.

But the fact is that no CEE economies will be immune from a general economic slowdown, maybe outright recession, in the more developed countries, especially in Europe. But the key is that the slow down in our key markets - Czech, Slovakia, Poland and Romania - is from a very rapid pace of growth, so the effects will be milder.

They are safe havens for investors then.

But 'CEE offers investment safe haven' doesn't have the drama of "The Worst is Yet to Come' , now, does it?

Feel free to add any of Headlines of the Week you may spot. We may even give a prize for the best one. Free Spanish villa on the costas, anyone?