City workers won't be putting their bonuses into property this year - they'll be investing in shares or paying off debts, says Angela Pertusini

I THINK you have to love estate agents for their sheer, unshakeable brilliance at straightening their ties, fixing a smile and insisting that right behind that very black cloud the sun couldn't be warmer.

Last week, news filtered from the City that bonuses this year were at the £7 billion level - only £2 billion down from 2007's record level and quite extraordinarily high considering what is politely termed the "turmoil" within London's financial institutions.

Within nanoseconds of this figure being published, estate agents were queuing up to say that they were expecting a surge of this money to come their way such was the hunger for property investment among the Bonus Boys.

Looking at the articles these claims generated a couple of days later on the internet, you couldn't help but be struck by the attached reader comments, many of which supposedly came from City workers and all of which were openly scoffing at the estate agents.

In fact, there was such a credibility gap that I rang a couple of the people I know who work in the City and asked them for sentiment within their offices (highly unscientific, I know, but potentially Pulitzer prize-winning compared to letting estate agents make unchallenged assertions).

I'm afraid the scoffers have it - they could think of no one in their departments who was speculating about how much house their bonus would buy in the current market (although they were all betting madly on how much it would buy in a couple of years' time when prices had "found the floor").

Being largely sensible types, a good few were using their bonuses to pay off current debts - willy-waving in the Square Mile doesn't come cheap and some of their overdrafts would make their mothers weep - and others were investing in conventional shares and even gilts.

Admittedly, my limited sample was taken from the lower layers of the City's hierarchy but the sound of "Duh!" incredulity to my question of whether they knew anyone who was thinking about buying property at the moment certainly suggests that estate agents are going to have to adjust their optimism radically.

PART of the cognoscenti's reluctance to buy now is the fact that government data published last week revealed that home repossessions were up by 21 per cent to more than 27,000 during 2007.

It's still a long way off the 1991 high of 75,000 - although this may be partly due to courts being less willing to grant repossession orders - but worrying nevertheless.

Predictions for 2008 range from 40,000 to 75,000 with, gulp, those newbuild apartments so beloved of investors making up more than their fair share of casualties.

So far, the repossessions have mainly been in the English provinces but the FT House Price Index last week revealed that London values are beginning to look vulnerable with growth at a three-year low. The vultures are circling.

FORGET the former-Soviet plutocrats who have been gobbling up London's super-prime. And those Arab oil tycoons are so passé. The nation that you should be wooing if you are thinking of selling a slice of Belgravia, South Ken or Knightsbridge is India. According to Savills, Indian buyers were responsible for 11 per cent of residential property purchases worth £5 million or more last year in what the Times of India has called "furious Indo-Russki competition" for the top houses.

The slight problem that I have with the endless drooling about London's lavish high-end market is that there's no real way of telling what is truth and what is hyperbole.

It is such a secretive and rarefied world that it is almost impossible to gauge what is happening within it unless you are, well, within it - which most journalists are definitely not.

So, how to take Knight Frank's assertion that the super-prime threshold may soon shift up a gear to a £10 million entry level just to sort the nation traders from, say, the mere Premiership footballers?