LONDON CALLING:The good news for first-time buyers is that prices are falling. The bad news is that lenders are getting super-strict

FOR THE past few years there has been a great deal of hand-wringing in the British media about the plight of the lesser-spotted first-time buyer (and related angst from middle-aged journalists about adult children unable to move out and leave their poor parents in peace).

So the downturn has been welcomed as good news by all for the poor first-timers, priced out of the market for several years by cash-rich investors.

In fact, somewhat cheekily, the first-timers have been seen as the knights on chargers by beleaguered landlords hoping to sell their not-so-profitable buy-to-lets as their mortgage deals come to an end and they find themselves in a whole new economic wonderland of money that, well, costs money.

This has proved to be something of a false dawn as, it turns out, the likeliest victims of the credit crunch are going to be the poor, put-upon first-timers. This time last year, you would not have had much trouble securing a 125 per cent mortgage.

There were plenty of independent financial advisers and large brokerages able to work up multiples of five or six times an annual salary through the wink-wink process of "self-certified" mortgages where, basically, for a fee, no ticklish questions were asked.

Both these types of borrowing were popular with beleaguered first-time buyers who did not have the wherewithal to provide a hefty deposit - and in London, that would mean £10,000 or £15,000 minimum - or to buy a wreck and pay for its renovation costs. Both these mortgages are now pretty much extinct.

And the news gets worse as banks try to prove they can be trusted with our money after all. Over the past few weeks, even the 100 per cent mortgage has been going the way of the giant panda and some 95 per cent mortgages are also looking increasingly threatened.

Since the new year, high street lenders including Abbey, Cheltenham & Gloucester, Coventry, Alliance & Leicester and Lloyds TSB have all withdrawn these high loan-to-value mortgages leaving the first-timers unable to access parental help well and truly hammered.

So who should Londoners look to for support in their time of property crisis? With sterling having fallen about 10 per cent over recent months against the euro, surely there has never been a better time for some of our European neighbours to reconsider the myriad opportunities for investment in this city. . .

• And there may be good news for landlords yet: the Office of Fair Trading (OFT) - a government body that protects consumer interests - is bringing a test case against that most reputable of estate agencies, Foxtons.

It argues that Foxtons's practise of taking a year's rental commission in advance and renewing demands for commission each subsequent year a tenant remains, even when it has not been involved in renegotiating contracts, managing the property or rent collection, is "unfair".

It is seeking an injunction to stop the agency continuing with this.

To be honest, this is a very common, almost universal, practise among London's estate agencies so it is unclear why Foxtons is being singled out by the OFT - apart from the obvious reason that almost everyone loathes them.

But, should the OFT win the case, it will have fantastic repercussions for landlords who will have to pay rental agencies only initial finding fees, likely to comprise 10 per cent or so of the first year's rent.

I can't imagine that estate agencies will give up without a fight, especially when their sales departments are suffering so badly at the moment, but landlords everywhere should let out an almighty cheer anyway.

• Statistics on London's most expensive street in 2007 have just been released and, improbably, the most expensive road is Courtenay Avenue in Highgate where the average price is £6,803,900.

I'm sure it's a very nice road, one side of it backing onto Highgate Golf Course and the southern end leading onto the rarefied beauty of Kenwood House and Hampstead Heath.

But, at a time when we are told that billionaire non-dom Lakshmi Mittal has put his home in nearby Bishops Avenue on sale for £40 million and that developer Mike Spink is rumoured to have just shifted his Holland Park des-res for £80 million, does it not seem a little bit sub-prime?