I'd be doing about 12,000 miles a year, and would finance the car over two years. (It's important to be realistic at the start about your annual mileage, because PCPs have expensive clauses in which the dealer can charge for every mile you've driven beyond the agreed total.) The salesman went to work. This works because you are deferring much of the cost until the end of the loan.A new Peugeot 106 Rallye provided my education into the workings of a PCP I could find pounds 1,500 as deposit. I wanted to keep the payments to as near pounds 150 a month as I could. But the lure of a brand-new car is enough to persuade around a third of all Britain's private buyers to join the same kind of complex finance deal as I did.

Welcome to the slippery world of the personal contract purchase (PCP). Three years ago, the arrival of the personal contract purchase must have seemed like magic: suddenly private buyers could finance a new car on monthly payments far lower than those of traditional hire-purchase or bank loans. It is being sold by Kathini Graham in Knightsbridge, London SW7, (0171-584 3285) for pounds 425,000.. Look before you lease Recently I needed to buy a car. Having trawled the second-hand stock at local dealers, I was agreeably surprised to end up with a brand new car that wore a windscreen sticker price of nearly double the figure I'd first had in mind yet was eminently affordable: the monthly loan payments were much as I'd budgeted for There just had to be a catch Indeed there was More than one, in fact. The apartment is 900 square feet and can be divided into two bedrooms, a bathroom, study and kitchen by the use of sliding glass walls. Designed by architect John Pawson, with an open cheque, it has Japanese oak floors, a bath carved from a solid slab of marble and not a single extraneous visible feature.

The 17th-century house, with five bedrooms, four reception rooms, nine loose boxes and 13 acres of land, is being sold by John D Wood (0171-493 4106) with a guide price of pounds 390,000.HousehunterLowndes Square, London SW1This apartment is so minimalist that even the walls can be hidden away. The best tactic for sellers in such a climate is not to stick 20 per cent on their asking price, but to pitch it at a level which will attract large numbers of buyers and leave them to fight it out.Who's MovingAspiring trainers may be interested in buying the stables that were home to Desert Orchid, the great grey steeplechaser who became a household name. The horse's trainer, James Burridge, is leaving the Manor House in Leicestershire horse country at Ab Kettleby near Melton Mowbray. The southern-based agency says the county most in demand is Surrey, with West Sussex, Hampshire, Oxfordshire and Gloucestershire all very popular.