“I have always had difficulties with conventional wisdom. It is when you find errors in conventional wisdom that you find a competitive advantage. You only have to find a few errors in conventional wisdom to make a living.” This view of Larry Ellison, the founder of Oracle, could well be applied to the spring property market – or lack of it – where fortune favoured those who braved conventional wisdom and pressed ahead to buy in the teeth of a gale of doom and gloom. With a buyer’s market now flipped to one favouring sellers, those brave souls are looking rather prescient.

Caution was understandable, given the press predictions of impending disaster in the house market, war in the Middle East and a stock market that looked as if it was going to touch 3000. In such an environment, being brave is difficult, given the sums of money involved and the natural reluctance to be the poor fool that bought at the top of the market; unfortunately, a house is a rather public statement that is not as easy to hide from your friends as a premature dip into the stock market. This particularly applies to London as the supply of property and the more discretionary nature of any purchase means that the sitting-on of hands will always be the easier option.

In the country, things are rather different as a house-move tends to be a lifestyle-move involving children, schools, jobs and a property market where, if you miss one bus, the next may only come round the corner in two years’ time. Once a decision to move has been made, it takes more than a few ripples on the pond to reverse that decision. While it would be untrue to say that the country market has been unaffected by such uncertainty, our country business has performed more or less as usual - in contrast to London where volume was 50% down during the first half of this year.

Three months is a long time in the property market and the world appears a much sunnier place than it did in the spring - in more ways than one. There are rumours that investment bankers will be getting good bonuses this year, technology shares are once again in demand and headhunters have taken off their hard hats. More importantly, the widely predicted crash of the property market hasn't materialised and there seems to be a general feeling that, if he hasn't died by now, the patient may well have passed the crisis point and will live to fight another day. There is no lack of money out there wanting bricks and mortar – all that was missing during the spring was confidence and that seems to be back.

Overall this hasn't yet translated into higher prices in London. As we mentioned in our last comment in June, there was quite an inventory that had built up through the lean winter months - while very few people were buying, the volume of property coming onto the market for sale remained pretty much as normal, giving plenty of supply to soak up the immediate demand that appeared in the summer months. Many estate agents have had their busiest July and August ever. There is now, however, a real shortage of supply in some price ranges - if you have £4 million burning a hole in your pocket, and you want a house in Notting Hill or Oxfordshire, you might be surprised at how disappointed you are. Across all price ranges, houses and flats orphaned by the market (normally because of price) are finding buyers.

The rental market remains weak overall, beset as it is by oversupply from the buy-to-let market but, in our view, it is rather better in the prime areas than the statistics would indicate. During the high days of the bull market, we were always bemused by the projected net yields that accompanied new developments being exported to the Far East. In our experience they were, to say the least, optimistic at 7% or 8%. Now we find Savills statistics averaging a 2.5% net yield, which is at the other end of the manic-depressive scale but which is probably reflecting the travails of the mass-market; in our experience 3% to 3.5% is perfectly achievable for good, differentiated property. If you are a tenant, what is always surprising is how few good properties there are - the scruffy and the second-rate are two-a-penny (but looking for top-dollar prices); the best rarely hangs around for long if the price is right.

The size of our London client list is normally a pretty accurate reflection of what is going on in the market as a whole; we are now as active as we have ever been right across the price ranges from £400,000 upwards - with plenty of new business in the pipeline; it has been the busiest September we have ever had in terms of new client meetings. If the laws of supply and demand are still active, then it is probable that this is going to result in higher prices by the end of this year both in London and the country. We are not talking about the huge increases that we've seen in the recent past nor, if you believe the Nationwide and Halifax (and we are sceptical) those still rocketing up in the provinces. We are anticipating prices edging back to the levels of the beginning of the year – with, maybe, a premium on top of that for the very best in the country house market where the Larry Ellisons of this world operate.

This is always a rarefied world – he was heard to remark to a friend during the excitement of the America’s Cup, “Why doesn’t everyone do this? It’s such fun.”