Don't boast if you bought buy-to-let property in London in the first quarter of the year, says Angela Pertusini.She warned you that it was the best time to sell

IT'S FUNNY how you can go around banging on about something and no one takes the blindest bit of notice of what you're saying until all your hunches are confirmed by a wonderful, independent report.

So, hurrah, for the Financial Times which has published a piece about many landlords selling up their rental properties to make the most of the suspected top-of-the-market months and/or because rents are no longer covering mortgage payments given the four rate rises since last summer.

While estate agents I have spoken to have denied that the ragbag of decrepit flats and tired not-so-new-builds are disproportionately representative of ex-rentals, the FT confirms this, with Knight Frank estimating up to 15 per cent of its rental stock was put up for sale in the past few months.

It just reiterates what I have been pleading with people to recognise: that there was never a better time to sell than the first quarter of this year. And like most useful information, it seems to have come just a little too late.

Because the London market is now, if not falling, definitely sticking. Those crazy asking prices of the new year are now looking just that: completely daft.

If you were one of the people who joined the great 2007 property rush from January to March, then don't boast about it - you'll be forever known as someone with more money than sense (or worse, people might think you're a City trader).

Concerns about affordability have stalled the market for anyone considering a mortgage and there seems something close to a property deadlock: those who would buy are simply too worried and those who might sell are simply too greedy.

Of the smattering of homes that have sprouted For Sale boards in the past few weeks in the run-up to the introduction of HIPs - more of which below - few have yet to garner Sale Agreed banners because prices are unrealistic.

I recently spoke to Patrick Flanagan who runs the Dublin-based property investment company, Old Ground Property, who is walking away from more and more deals as vendors simply refuse to negotiate any longer.

He thinks, as I do, that prices are going to have to come down in the short term - and London will be a healthier place for it.

The good news for those who already own a slice of London is that all this uncertainty is edging rental prices upwards.

• A scary piece of research from de Montfort University shows that lending on commercial buildings during 2006 hit an all-time high of £85 billion, up almost 20 per cent in one year, due to a combination of higher property prices and an increasingly diverse section of buyers.

Alarmingly, however, more than 40 per cent of the money borrowed went on speculative schemes that have no secured tenants making that particular sector look dangerously crowded.

Commercial yields are now stagnating at about 4 per cent in some areas which makes me wonder what all the frenzy is about - wouldn't you be better off putting the money in a high-interest account rather than getting into hock for such a small return?

I guess it's stories such as the recent rumours that the Royal Bank of Scotland is to sell its two Canary Wharf buildings for about £1.5 billion - an eye-watering (or lip-licking, depending on your standpoint) €19,763 a sq m (£1,000 per sq ft).

• As I predicted a few weeks ago (is there any sweeter phrase in journalism?), plans for Home Information Packs (HIPs) have been shelved.

The compulsory scheme would have meant that every property marketed in England and Wales after June 1st would need a HIP which would include the house's next-to-useless Energy Performance Certificate.

Ruth Kelly, the luckless minister charged with their introduction, has vowed that they will be rolled out later this year focusing, initially, on homes with four bedrooms or more.

So, that should mark the death knell for selling family houses as we currently know them. Look forward to a brave, new future where large Victorian rectories are marketed as "three-bedroom with two upstairs sittingrooms with convenient fitted wardrobes, and a large, first-floor, fully en suite study".

With the Royal Institution of Chartered Surveyors still threatening to force a judicial review on the whole fiasco and a new prime minister ready to pick up the reins, it seems unlikely that this particular piece of legislation, as well as poor Ms Kelly, will survive too far into the new administration.