Neil Simpson is a former Personal Finance Journalist of the Year and the author of the Buy-to-Let Investor column in Financial Mail on Sunday. He is a keen property investor and writes about buy-to-let online as well as for a variety of publications including City AM.

I like it when people agree with me – especially influential people. So amidst all the gloomy buy-to-let stories in the papers lately it’s great to hear Nigel Terrington, chief executive of Paragon Mortgages, say that 2008 will be ‘a year of opportunity’ for many investors. He has been looking forward at figures for the number of households we have in the UK and the number we’re likely to acquire over the next few years. He’s also been looking back at the way the market has responded to downturns in the past. Both exercises have given cause for cautious optimism.

His first point is pretty well rehearsed. We all know that from immigration to the rise of the single householder we’re going to need a lot more properties than we’ve got in the years ahead. A lot more than the house-builders are likely to produce for us, regardless of Government hopes. Terrington’s second point is less well understood – though it deserves a far greater hearing. He has gone through lettings’ figures to see how the rental market has developed over the years. It seems the biggest growth in the number of privately rented households hasn’t happened in the last few years when the economy has been storming ahead. It happened between 1989 and 1994 when negative equity was rife, when repossessions were high and when property prices were in their last great slump.

It proves what many landlords have always known: That bad news for the residential owner-occupier market can be very good news for them. Everyone has to live somewhere. And while rent collection can get complicated in a recession any investor who rides out the storms is likely to be in a good position when the good times return – as they certainly did from the mid 1990s onwards.

Other newly released figures and research show that experienced landlords are likely to do best if we do get another slump-induced boom in the private rentals market. The Royal Institution of Chartered Surveyors says buy-to-let is set to become a rich man’s game. High prices and larger deposit requirements mean you can no longer just join the party with a few thousand pounds from savings. Across most of the country you need serious money to get invested – which should in turn produce a more serious attitude to the subject of risk and return.

By freezing out some more frivolous new investors the existing landlords can hope to do a little better. And as the RICS points out, many of these longer term players have plenty of equity in their existing portfolios. So if they do spot investment opportunities they can still take advantage of them – credit crunch or no credit crunch. Where these opportunities may be is set to be the most interesting question for the rest of this year and the start of next. I reckon a lot more lateral thinking is going to be required. Repossessions, hard bargains as developers approach their year ends, mainstream, unflashy properties from ordinary suburban estate agents. Many of the big investors I speak to are looking at all of these areas. I’m hoping to get some other tips from them when I go out to meet a few later this week. If they’ll let me, I’ll pass them on as soon as possible.

Finally, a quick word on interest rates. I don’t think anyone really expected the Bank of England to cut rates in November. If it moves too quickly whenever the headlines scream about an impending crisis it loses both credibility and effectiveness. The longer it can keep things steady the more influence it can wield. It’s hard to imagine any change next month either – a cut would probably trigger some binge spending in the run-up to Christmas when we would all be a lot better off keeping debts under control. A New Year cut might be nice, but I’m not sure it will come as early as January. And of course any oil price, or credit slump induced wild card could come into play which alters everything.

It’s worth remembering that six months ago we were all confidently predicting another rate rise by the end of 2007, not talking about when the next cut might come. So if you are re-mortgaging the fix or variable question is as finely balanced as ever. If I was ready to re-mortgage I think I’d go for the best variable rate deal my broker could find me – making sure I wasn’t paying the lender too high an application fee for the deal. But I’d also check what my payments on the deal would be if rates were to confound our expectations and go up by another half per cent or so in the life of my loan. If my rent won’t cover that then I’d fix. It’s not rocket science. But these really are uncertain times. So it’s worth taking a little longer talking to a good broker about all the options.