I read this recently about unscrupulous estate agents:

“James Pendleton, which has ten offices in south and west London, said regulation may be the only way to stamp out poor practices. Founder Lee James Pendleton said the tricks included refusing to pass on offers, inventing buyers and dreaming up fictional offers and viewings.

"Pendleton claims that some agents are not just trying to gain the upper hand over the competition – but also their own colleagues. He said, 'This is the truth about the underbelly of this industry. It is unregulated and, as a result, attracts some pretty unscrupulous characters.

"'You’ve got to remember that someone a day out of prison with no qualifications or ethical compass can set up an estate agency and sell your home.'"

Source – Property Industry Eye.

Equally, an unscrupulous agent can overvalue properties and show your clients who are buying comparators which can make a property seem like reasonable value but which are in fact totally misleading.

Indeed, one of the reasons, I founded Mercury Homesearch 16 years ago was because I became fed up with the service and advice I was receiving as a homebuyer in London. I knew that buyers needed protection from the agents and better representation, advice and service.

Now, I must also add that many of the “property advisers” who claim to help buyers are no better than the estate agents mentioned above; some of the stories I have heard about incompetence and misrepresentation are genuinely disturbing. So, you must be careful. In the worst cases, so called “buyers’ advisers” actually take their fee from the estate agent…

Unfortunately, most buyers turn instead to the press as an impartial source to try to get a better understanding of the market. But much of what is reported in the press is also highly misleading because:

1. Most of their data is provided by the estate agents 
2. The data is too general, i.e. what is happening in the UK or even London as a whole may not be representative of what is happening in your target areas 
3. The journalist is not a specialist in London property 
4. The goal of newspaper editors/journalists is to sell as many papers as possible so stories and forecasts tend to lean to extreme scenarios which are low probability but make good headlines 
5. The data and statistics are simply inaccurate

So, you may have read several articles over the last few months about massive price falls. Sellers are “slashing” their asking prices in a desperate attempt to attract buyers – that is the gist of most articles. And they are true to some extent but also very misleading.

Because many sellers had totally unrealistic expectations in the first place. And then combine this with estate agents who have been so desperate for properties – they have near record low levels of stock – that they have been overvaluing homes to simply “win the instruction”. Consequently, many asking prices were pie in the sky.

Probably the most famous example is a house in Bishop’s Avenue which was originally valued at $100m. When it finally sold, the price was c. £25m. Of course, this doesn’t mean that property prices have crashed. Just that one seller had an inflated opinion of his property.

In such instances, overvaluations are easy to spot, but there are plenty of other situations where a property can be 25% overvalued but be far less obvious if you do not know what you are doing. These are situations where “dummy” comparators can be given to you to make a property look like fair value or even a bargain.

This is why it is essential that you and your clients have a clear understanding of valuations before you make an offer, so you must undertake some serious due diligence on the street and area in which you are buying.

Also don’t think you have negotiated well just because you have managed a price reduction. If you have negotiated 15 per cent off the asking price but the asking price was 25 per cent above fair value, then you have been fooled into overpaying. Of course, naïve property buyers and negotiators think they have been clever. It is only later that the embarrassing truth becomes apparent.

Please do not make the same mistakes.

But there is good news. Sellers have become more realistic so there are some good opportunities out there. Unfortunately, they will last long because there are more buyers in the market and I expect next year to see price rises which will be far stronger than the mainstream predicts.

The mainstream is almost always wrong and I am so confident that prices will rise next year I have put my money where my mouth is and recently bought an investment property in London.

So, the run up to Christmas will provide you and your clients with a good opportunity to buy, but you must be careful and stick to the 'Best in Breed' strategy.

Read more from Jeremy McGivern:

House prices under Conservative and Labour governments

Brexit – The Illusion of Democracy

London property prices to crash 25% while politicians flee the UK