Until recently, house prices had been on a seemingly unstoppable upward spiral.

Property had become the asset of choice for both private and professional investors.

But then the credit crunch hit.

House prices across the UK and elsewhere around the globe went into free fall.

Investing in property is now the preserve only of the very brave, the very stupid or the fabulously rich.

Super rich

At the top end of the market properties are still changing hands for many millions of pounds.

These high-end properties exist in a market climate all their own and for many buyers and sellers the odd 10% rise or fall in the asking price for these hard to find homes hardly makes a difference.

For the super rich the cost of one house hardly matters, as they are more than likely to own portfolios of properties around the world.

What is being bought is a way of life.

“The marketplace is all about buying a lifestyle,” says Jonathan Hewlett of high end property consultants, Savills.

“We have had many sales over $40m” William Zeckendorf

“Wealthy people come to London or already exist in London, they want to buy properties like we go to the shops to buy a suit or a tie and the thought of having to wait six months or three years is too much for them.

“Time is money to most of them – it’s find something that’s ready, let’s go for it.”

Mr Hewlett has been in the business for nearly 25 years, watching the market’s ebbs and flows, and has seen how things have changed.

“When I started you counted on your fingers the number of £1m – and I mean £1m properties – now the market goes up to £100m.

“There are certainly quite a few sales that I have been involved around £50m.”

Hot properties

In New York the high end goes up to sky-scraping levels as well.

Fifteen Central Park West is one of the newest residential properties to spring up for the super wealthy of Manhattan.

It boasts private wine cellars, its own library, a private cinema screening room, and a chef on call 12 hours a day.

William Zeckendorf is one of two brothers who developed this site and he seems quite pleased with the way sales are going.

“The apartments start at approximately $5m (£2.5m) and how high do they go? You can use your imagination but we have had many sales over $40m,” he said.

“We’re sold out now so we sold $2bn of apartments in about two years.”

These are not small flats either so many residents decide to buy extra space to house their staff.

“We have three floors of maid suites – those are all about 600 sq ft (56 sq m) – there are some that are a 1,000 sq ft (93 sq m) and those were sold out immediately,” he added.

In case you are interested, the staff quarters will set you back anything from £1.2m to £2.4m.

A name that is synonymous with luxury housing in New York is Donald Trump, and his son Donald Trump junior has followed his dad into the family trade.

He has not noticed any downturn for prestige properties.

“The places where we are producing best are actually in our very large units – we sold a unit in Trump World Tower for $39m.

“We have an apartment in Trump Park Avenue for $45m and those are the things that are seeing the most interest, because as the economy waxes and wanes, there still tend to be people in that top one percentile.

“For them it’s almost irrelevant, meaning they’re not affected by the sub prime crisis – they are not worried about getting a mortgage.

“If they want, they close on their apartments,” he added.

Solid foundations? If it’s only one of your properties… it may well be that you can get through an economic cycle

Michael Dicks, Barclays Wealth Management

But can this buoyancy in the top of the market really last?

At Barclays Wealth Management, Michael Dicks says that buying at this level of the market might be a way to hedge one’s bets against the worst of the cyclical downturn.

“It’s difficult to know for sure, but probably you have more insurance, if you like, buying at that end of the market, so it’s not so much of your wealth.

“It’s part of your investment portfolio, but it’s not a huge part.

“I think for most people, losing your job means that you struggle to meet your mortgage payments, and as a result the housing market is very sensitive to the economic cycle.

“If it’s only one of your properties – or only a part of your portfolio – it may well be that you can get through an economic cycle without missing out on those payments that you owe.”

The difference between the rich and the super rich has become more pronounced in the past decade, so it is not surprising that the difference in the properties in which we live would be more pronounced as well.

It seems that if you have the money to live at the top of the housing ladder you can sleep easily knowing your property investments probably are as safe as houses.

News reported by The BBC

This summer over 3 million of us will go to a festival, and with over 500 to choose from in the UK alone, what started as flower power is now big business.

Promoters are looking for their slice of what’s estimated to be a billion pound industry but as John Giddings, organiser of the Isle of Wight Festival explains, it’s not easy.

“It’s the biggest gamble in the world. You gamble millions of pounds, hoping that people will buy tickets to see the bands you think they want to see.

“And if you’re lucky you can make money at the end, but it’s a very quick way of losing money if you don’t get it right.”

‘Eternal teenager’

It’s not just the young that promoters are hoping to attract. Many bigger festivals are designed to attract customers of all ages.

Melvin Benn, organiser of the Reading and Leeds festivals which attract 140,000 fans, says: “The idea of being an eternal teenager is very much on the agenda, and I’m rather pleased that it is actually, because that means that people still want to go to festivals when they’re 30, 40 and 50.”

Richard Cope, Senior Leisure Analyst at Mintel, agrees. “This is the first time we’ve had this generation who are traditionally time and cash rich, this is the first time we’ve had a generation in this segment who have grown up with rock and roll.”

Booking the right headliners to attract ticket sales is key, and it’s no coincidence that so-called heritage acts like The Sex Pistols and The Police who can attract older, wealthier fans have headlined festivals this summer.

Ticket sales are increasingly important to festival promoters as lucrative sponsorship deals become a less popular source of income.

This year Melvin Benn decided against renegotiating a long-standing sponsorship deal with Carling.

“Very simply I didn’t want it to be called the ‘something something’ Reading Festival or the ‘something something’ weekend.

“I wanted it to be called Reading Festival and Leeds Festival. That was a lucrative sponsorship and it will cost me a fair bit of money, but I think in the long run it was the right thing to do.”

‘Ethical standpoint’

And promoter Vince Power made his decision not to have branding and sponsorship a selling point of his Hop Farm festival in Kent.

He says: “Sponsorship is not going to stop, but it’s refreshing as you go around the site you’re not going to fall over a brewery sign.”

The Sunrise Celebration Festival in Somerset turned down sponsors for different reasons.

Sophie Docker, one of the organisers, explains: “We won’t make any kind of arrangements with any organisations that don’t have the same kind of ethical standpoint that we do.

“We’ve had some offers from people that we’ve turned down because it’s not green enough for us.”

It’s a principled stance, but does it make good business sense?

Peter Florence, founder and organiser of the Hay Literary Festival, says its sponsorship deals are crucial.

“We have 5% of our budget from the public purse, 70% of our budget from ticket sales, but without the money from Sky and Emirates and The Guardian then we’d be stuffed.”

But is the market getting too crowded? Sixteen summer festivals have already been cancelled, and even Glastonbury was reported to have had difficulty selling all its tickets.

Organisers say fans are just getting too picky and won’t shell out unless the biggest acts are lined up.

However, it wasn’t the sponsorship deal, or lack of it, that scuppered Sunrise, but the good old British weather.

With the worst flash floods for twenty years hitting Somerset the night before its opening, the event was cancelled: an indication that the festival business always carries unforeseen risks.

‘More small festivals’

And what of the future? Vince Power thinks the current number of festivals is unsustainable.

“We’re obviously going into a recession; at least that’s what everyone tells us,” he says.

“So I think there’ll be a lot of festivals that will go under because of lack of sales. I think the big names will survive. The little ones, they will find it hard to make ends meet. ”

Melvin Benn also believes there will be a shake-out in the industry.

“I think there’ll be a continued diversity of more small festivals, but I think the number of people running them will be less.

“I think the big promoters will eventually buy up a number of smaller ones, no different to normal high street businesses in that sense.”

News reported by BBC