More and more properties are being marketed for rent rather than being sold on. 'Speaking to brokers, we have noticed a shift in the market. Now that more and more properties are being completed, property owners are looking to rent their properties to manage mortgage repayments,' said property event director Pooja Rajani.

The trend has also been noticed by Riad Kamal, the chief executive of construction giant Arabtec Holding. He said that more developers would become more reliant on income from property rents as the housing sales market continued to slow.

'There is a huge demand for rented accommodation and that's what is escalating the rent prices. What we are going to see is a healthy correction as more accommodation becomes available, helping to reduce the rents which today are just very unreasonable,' he added.

Parts of the coastline may be over priced and over saturated but there are still bargains around for the buyer who knows where to look and at this time of year there are plenty of bargains around.

Brand new homes which are low maintenance are an ideal choice for anyone searching for a stress- free ‘lock up and leave’ bolthole in the sun. Yet, if you don’t mind a spot of DIY, buying an established property can be a great way of getting yourself a bargain, and finding a unique property at the same time.

Buying an established home has several advantages, including the fact that you can move into your chosen property quickly, sometimes within weeks. The property will also be up and running, with running services and mature, established gardens.

If you prefer an established property, be prepared for some legwork. Estate agents often let a vendor set their own sales price, but how do you make sure you’re not paying over the odds? There is no short cut method, and doing your own research into the market is vital.

Look at as many properties as you can and make sure to take notes on key points such as floor size, location, closeness to amenities and even views. Try and find out what market conditions in the area you have chosen are like. Are properties selling quickly or are they hanging around?

Remember that a vendor will also be influenced by the time of year, it’s easier to negotiate out of season, and don’t be afraid to bargain hard!

Has your dream of a holiday home in Spain turned into a nightmare? For many Britons who borrowed heavily during the years of cheap credit to buy on the costas or beyond, the answer, unfortunately, is “yes”.

Those persuaded to finance their purchase with a Spanish mortgage are being hit by a triple whammy: rising euro-mortgage interest rates, a surging euro that makes their monthly repayments even higher in pounds, and falling house prices that threaten to push them into negative equity.

Furthermore, even when they succeed in letting their properties, the rental yields often bear little resemblance to the exaggerated claims made by estate agents when they bought.

And that is not to mention the thousands of people who own homes that, it has transpired, were built without proper planning permission and could now be demolished following a clampdown by the authorities.

Patrick Cassidy, 58, and his wife, Joy, 61, are among those ruing the day they bought in Spain. In spring 2006, at the peak of the market, they paid €375,000 (then worth £262,000) for two flats near La Manga, on the Murcian coast in the southeast of the country, with a deposit of just £6,000 and a 125% mortgage. Things rapidly began to go wrong.

“At first, our mortgage payments were about €740 [£510] a month for each apartment, but that went up to €940 [£660] a month in late 2007, when the interest-only period expired and interest rates went up,” says Cassidy, a taxi driver. “We had one tenant for seven months, but his rent didn’t even cover the mortgage. Now, with the exchange rate going bad, the apartments are costing us about £2,000 a month. We are taking a pasting and we can’t afford it.”

Several months - and several thousand pounds - in arrears on his payments, Cassidy has handed back the keys to the bank. Because of what appear to have been irregularities in the way he was sold the mortgage, the matter will probably end there. Other British investors caught in negative equity may not find it quite so easy to walk away from their debts - which have been exacerbated by the pound’s 15% slide from just over €1.50 early last year to the current €1.27.

“Under EU regulations, Spanish lenders can pursue outstanding mortgage-related debts against assets in the UK,” says Susana de las Cuevas, a dual-qualified Spanish and British solicitor with Irwin Mitchell in London. “Ignorance is no defence, so you can’t argue you didn’t know you would be liable in the UK.”

So, what do you do if you find you can’t keep up with your payments? The important thing is to act sooner rather than later. “Don’t ignore the problem, and talk to your lender as soon as you can, preferably before missing a payment,” de las Cuevas advises. “You may be able to negotiate a solution - and, even if you can’t, burying your head in the sand will only make it worse.”

Going into denial and hoping your debts won’t catch up with you back home is a big mistake: it drags out the process, which drives up the final cost to you. “All missed payments are added to the debt, as are any legal fees the bank incurs, and you start paying a higher penalty interest rate, so your debt escalates the longer it takes,” says Lee Lyons, who runs The Spanish Mortgage Company, a home-loan broker.

Fortunately, the last thing mortgage lenders want to do is repossess your property, especially if they have to pursue you in Britain, so your negotiating power with the bank may be stronger than you think. “They are likely to give you every chance to negotiate better conditions - perhaps a longer term or an interest-only period,” Lyons says. “If you can get your payments down to a manageable level, and make a bigger effort to get some rental income, it may give you breathing room to survive until the market picks up.”

For many overextended Britons, however, better mortgage terms might not help much. In this case, damage limitation is required, and a quick sale at a loss is likely to be the least bad solution. Dropping your price might mean having to pay more to clear your mortgage debt, but in the long run it could work out cheaper than repossession.

If all else fails, your mortgage lender will repossess the property and sell it at public auction, which could take up to two years. If the proceeds from the sale are not enough to pay off your mortgage, along with the penalty interest and all other expenses incurred, then the bank will have to decide whether to pursue you in Britain. If your outstanding debt is small - a few thousand pounds, say - then they may decide that it isn’t worth it, as debt collection is not cheap. If your debt is sizeable, however, don’t be surprised if you hear from the bank’s UK-based lawyers.

What if you are in the happy position of being a buyer in this market? Can you take advantage of rising foreclosures on holiday homes in Spain to snap up a bargain at auction? Probably not, is the honest answer. Really great opportunities still get snaffled up by insiders long before auction, and those that do make it through may be earmarked by the “auction mafia” - who are people you don’t want to cross. If you bid against the wrong person in a public auction in Spain, there is no telling what might happen to your property. Your best bet is to let bank managers and estate agents in the area know that you are a solvent buyer in a position to move quickly. That way, you might find a distressed vendor who is prepared to take a big hit for a quick sale to avoid the costs of repossession.

One final word of warning: anyone struggling to pay their Spanish mortgage should be wary of refinancing solutions that sound too good to be true. In times like these, scams that prey on desperation abound. They nearly always leave you worse off than you would have been dealing with your original lender

The blonde goddess in the flowing white dress plucked serenely at her golden harp, oblivious to the teeming flow of humanity around her. Her presence on the stand of Ferragamo penthouses in the inventively named Pentominium tower was doubtless intended to emphasise their classiness, but, like most things in these parts, the show was really all about the numbers.

Men in shirtsleeves, business suits or crisp white dishdashas with flowing headdresses, and women in everything from burkas to minidresses were all intent, in this 21st-century souk with products and price tags on a mind-boggling scale, on the biggest game in town: the Dubai property market. An estimated 60,000 visitors from 150 countries surged through the world’s biggest property exhibition last week – and, even as the stock exchanges in Dubai and neighbouring Abu Dhabi reflected the global financial unrest, the atmosphere inside showed no signs of flagging.

“The UAE is well placed to weather the storm and will rebound faster than most other economies,” declared Ali Kolaghassi, vice chairman and CEO of Jordan’s Saraya Holdings. “I don’t see real estate going down in value.” His words might be seen as an exercise in damage limitation. On the show’s opening day, The National, a high-profile English-language daily, ran a front-page story, purporting to be based on a report by the property consultants Colliers International, announcing that property prices in Dubai had fallen by 16%. The following day came a sheepish apology: Colliers had actually said that the rate of growth had eased to 16% in the second quarter, after a blistering 43% in the first three months of this year. In other words, the trend was still upward.

From its huge stand at the show, rumoured to have cost almost £6m, Nakheel, Dubai’s largest developer, launched the world’s tallest tower. At more than 1km high, it will dwarf the current title-holder, the Burj Dubai, which has almost been completed and is expected to top out at 819 metres. The glittering scale model at the centre of the stand showed it rising proudly from a nest of more than 40 towers, on a site set in a network of canals.

Another fabulous launch was the modestly named Falconcity of Wonders, which will feature, among its villas and apartment blocks, not just a theme park, but replicas of what its developer has decided are the eight wonders of the world – among them the Eiffel Tower, the Taj Mahal, the Great Wall of China, the Great Pyramid, Venice and what the sales girl confided was the “Leaning Tower of Pizza”. It will have 3,000 units; phases one and two have sold out, with prices set at about £1,650 a square metre, and prices for the third phase will be announced next week.

Meraas Development launched a “master planned community”, Jumeirah Gardens, a £55 billion scheme, the size of a small city, that will include three towers linked by sky bridges. Damac Properties offered an incredible 40% guaranteed rental return on its new Executive Suites project in Business Bay. Dubai Properties, meanwhile, launched its Cairo villas as part of Mudon, a development set back from the coast that will house 50,000 residents in five “cities” named and supposedly styled after leading Arab conurbations: Cairo, Damascus, Marrakesh, Beirut and, er, Baghdad.

Elsewhere at the show, Michael Schumacher, the seven-time Formula One champion, introduced his own branded tower in Abu Dhabi. Another developer, Hydra Properties, touted its range of skyscrapers, including one marketed exclusively to female entrepreneurs.

The expo’s official paper summed up the prevailing optimism with the front-page headline “No sign of a slowdown”. Yet there are indications that the property boom, which began in 2002 when Dubai became the first of the emirates to allow foreigners to buy property, may be brought to an end by oversupply. The Colliers International report predicted that about 140,000 new homes would be completed in Dubai by the end of 2010, adding to the existing stock of 300,000.

For the time being, at least, prices are not dropping and developers are not leaving the market – although it’s becoming more expensive for them to fund their projects. In addition, new regulations on off-plan selling, introduced in an effort to prevent rampant speculation, as well as the merger of two mortgage providers, mean that the market is not slowing, but rather “maturing”, according to the optimists.

Andrew Chambers, managing director of Asteco, a Dubai-based property services company, is among those who see property prices as more likely to level off than fall. “People come to Dubai because of many factors – the working environment, job opportunities, safety and security, and the fact that there is no tax,” he says. “All these keep demand high. In America, 180,000 jobs have been lost. Here, it’s the opposite: there is a shortage of skilled people.”