Companies in general (and property companies in particular) are often scared of Television. No, not scared – terrified. It’s because they’ve all seen those undercover TV programmes where secretly recorded dodgy sales people promise clients the Earth in exchange for their hard-earned cash, with unrealistic claims over property appreciation etc.

But hang on a minute. If the sales people had told the truth instead of fibbing, then the TV types wouldn’t have had anything to broadcast would they? If you’re not doing anything dodgy, you really haven’t got anything to fear. Don’t believe me? Well, take the case of Propertyshowrooms.com, a web-based international property company, who were recently featured on an ITV regional television programme talking about the state of the market in southern Spain and beyond.

The TV crew travelled all the way from Britain to Spain, met the directors of the company, did their interviews, went where they liked and filmed what they liked. Propertyshowrooms.com had absolutely zero editorial control over what was scripted and filmed, and guess what? A report was filed with a perfectly honest and reasonable on-screen quote from one of their bosses (see the ‘In the Media’ section of Propertyshowrooms.com for more details). Sure, the reporter expressed her views about the Spanish property market in a somewhat negative way, but by the same token it would have been ridiculous to suggest that everything is always a bed of roses. And she did admit that with year round gorgeous weather, Spain will always have a sunny future.

But what I’m trying to say is, the Press are not all vicious, devious, malignant creatures (some are, but not all) out to ruin every company in the world. Let’s not forget that in the case of property investment in Spain, the Media did nothing but praise Spain for something like ten years, before harder times arrived. Have we all so soon forgotten how every episode of A Place In The Sun seemed to extol the virtues of life in España? Some say it was probably mainly responsible for the Spanish property boom in the first place.

When times get tougher, it separates the men from the boys (or the women from the girls?) and only those who do things properly (and legally) will have a chance to prosper. And frankly, that’s how it should be. Overall then, property investment is still the way to go. The Earth ain’t getting any bigger, and land is finite. If you look at the last fifty years or so, it’s easy to see how those who invested in property and land are usually the ones who manage to weather the storm. And when the sun emerges again, everyone else says ‘I wish I’d done that.’ Hindsight is a wonderful thing, but don’t worry you can always watch the doomsday reports again and again in ten years time, when they’re all repeated on television…