I have a confession to make. I pulled out of a property transaction earlier this year and left the seller high and dry. I’d like to say it was because of my impeccable sense of timing in all matters financial. That I  could see the UK housing market was tanking and that commuter flats (such as the one I was trying to buy) would tank more than most.  Or even that I was playing hard-ball and but had my bluff called. In fact, it was none of these - my solicitor spotted a show-stopping legal hitch and off I went to rent instead.

It didn’t stop the estate agent questioning my decision though. Was I trying to ‘gazunder’ the seller, he mused aloud in a subsequent phone call. Fortunately, though journalists (and estate agents) are sometimes accused of being only loosely acquainted with ethics, I was able to show I had the purest of motives. But, according to estate agents, gazundering - where buyers demand a last-minute price drop - is back with a vengeance.

“It’s increasing and we’re finding the average reduction purchasers try for is between 5-10 percent, says Richard Cotton, senior partner at London-based property consultants and surveyors Cluttons. “The 10 percent figure is mainly at the top end.”

So far, in London and the southeast of England anyway, sellers still mostly have plenty of equity in their properties and there hasn’t been a rush of forced sellers. Unhappy vendors will also tell would-be gazunderers to get lost if they try it on at the last minute, particularly if - as is often the case - they have already dropped the price by 10-20% to attract them in the first place.

But this could change as thousands of homeowners on low fixed term mortgages find repayments rising to much higher, unaffordable levels. They may then have to sell for whatever they can get.

“We’re not there yet. But in those circumstances the chances are that you might not find a buyer for up to six months,” Cotton told me. “Then my advice would be to take it on the chin. Get on with your lives, cut your losses and move on. If you’re in a chain, the obvious thing is to share the price cut with those further up the chain.”

Discussion of gazundering usually provokes extreme reactions. In the same way that gazumpers,  those who trump others when the market’s going up, infuriate the losing bidders, vendors usually express contempt for those who try it on when the market’s going the other way.

Unlike Scotland, where your bid is considered legally binding, the price you pay for a house in England and Wales isn’t fixed until the exchange of contracts. Up to that point, anything goes. So gazundering isn’t remotely illegal. But is it ethical? Visiting an estate agent in southwest London last week to to check property details, I asked a negotiator what he thought. I don’t know why, I guess I was just interested in his reaction. The question provoked a wide smirk - and gales of laughter at the next desk. I had my answer.