Says Mr Raithatha: "Clarence Dock is the largest mixed use development in the North, with leisure facilities, a casino, hotel and restaurants in the plans, and one bedders there literally fly out of the window for rentals at £650-700 per month. Two bedders easily fetch £850.

"Not all our investors will still be there when the scheme is actually completed. But because we only buy into quality schemes, we advise buyers they are likely to be making a sensible investment if they decide to hang on for about ten years".

Manoj Raithatha claims another major acquisition in Yorkshire, for £30m plus, is about to be confirmed. And he believes that this one, too, will soon sell to many of the 2,000-plus investors already registered with Summertime.

"Many property clubs charge clients a finder's fee of perhaps £5,000 per property", he says. "We include our margin in the selling price - and in some completed developments we provide a furniture and fittings package, also included in the price, to ensure a property is immediately ready for occupation."

Curiously, Manoj Raithatha has gone public on his latest deal just as Grant Bovey, the husband of TV presenter Anthea Turner, is profiled in the estate agents' magazine Negotiator.

Bovey runs Imagine Homes, a Farnborough, Surrey-based company, which asks investors to put £10,000 on the table, buys a new home for them between £120,000 and £500,000 up to a year ahead of completion, and guarantees to pay a cash lump sum equal to 7.5% of the cost of the property for the first two years.

Fixtures, fittings and white goods are all included, with some furniture designed by Anthea herself.

But what happens when the two years are up? Negotiator says 95% of Imagine investors stick with their tenants and stay with Imagine.

Bovey's other company, Veritas, chooses the properties and retains some for its own portfolio, currently worth about £30m. This gives added confidence to investors, says Bovey, they aren't being palmed off with second-rate stuff.

Negotiator accepts some investors "won't have seen the capital growth they would have liked".

Bovey plans to buy £100m worth of property this year - in Bristol, Middlesex, Manchester and Sheffield, as well as London. And he is currently "eyeing up " Liverpool.

Imagine is currently selling 14 apartments in The Unity Building, near Pier Head, from £205,000 to £218,000, which will be finished in Summer 2006.

The market may be becalmed - yet there is clearly no shortage of investors confident they can still make a killing.

Builders must be delighted that operators like Summertime and Imagine are still out there. In return for a discount, they slash selling costs and get oodles of cash in their coffers to reassure nervy shareholders.

But are there long-term implications for the market in some developments where investors hold sway? And will some private owners who paid the full price get a shock when they look to resell?

Longer-term landlords may have a point. According to Housing Futures 2025, published by the Centre for Economics and Business Research, the private rented sector is set to rise by one million homes to 3.5m over the next eight years until 2014.

CEBR predicts the buy-to-let sector will double over the next ten years, after a brief pause caused by falling prices.

INFORMATION: Imagine Homes (0800 458 5050); Summertime Properties (0845 402 7076).

:: SELF-BUILDERS FACE SHORTAGE OF LAND

Hundreds of homeowners with the dream of building their own home will head for the ExCel Exhibition Centre in London Docklands on Sept 30 - for the latest Homebuilding and Renovating Show.

More than 200 exhibitors - and a programme of twelve free daily seminar sessions - will try to tell them how it's done. And the Federation of Master Builders will be on hand to put them in touch with better quality firms.

In time for the show, the self-build and renovation specialist Build Store has produced a raft of new mortgages with The Mortgage Business (TMB) devised for self-builders who are also self-employed.

All four loans are based on self-certification, all offer loan to value up to 85% available as an interest-only or repayment loan, or a mixture of both.

Financially, it has become easier to become a self-builder, but the big problem, particularly in Southern England, is finding suitable plots. Many self-builders are having to buy rundown properties, for demolition to make way for a new home.

Agents Strutt & Parker believe they have just such a property - in the wilds of Northumberland, between the Cheviots and the North Sea coast.

Lowick South Steads, eight miles from Berwick-upon-Tweed, is a single stone farmhouse, needing restoration, and adjoining outbuildings in 2.25 acres of paddock and woodland. Detailed planning permission allows for restoration of the property, and conversion of outbuildings to form a single dwelling.

Guide price from Strutt's is £229,000.

INFORMATION: For details of London Home-building & Renovating Show, ExCel, London Docklands, Sept 30-Oct 2, visit www.excel-london.co.uk or call 0207 069 5000; Buildstore (0870 870 9991 or visit www.buildstore.co.uk); Strutt & Parker's Morpeth office in Northumberland is on 01670 516123.

Also at ExCel on the same weekend, (Sept 30-Oct 2) is A Place in the Sun Exhibition, promoting property developments from around the world. Advance tickets at discounted rate of £8 available on www.aplacein the sunlive.com