Have you ever wondered what goes on at the property “seminars” you see advertised in all types of publications? I went along to one recently hosted by the George Wimpey Property Investor Club at the Britannia International Hotel, in the London Docklands, to find out.

The venue was impressive - a 440-room hotel, all gilt and glass. The sales “pitch” - let's call it that and put the silly “seminar” idea to one side - took place in a first-floor conference room and was due to start at 6.30pm. There was no meet-and-greet formality. Instead my fellow punters, many looking distinctly uncomfortable, found themselves on a landing walled by advertising boards, each showing posters of the apartment blocks you find in all our towns and cities.

Why, I asked, had these particular individuals been targeted? “It's simply a way for us to set up a dialogue with smaller-scale investors,” said Kevin Belsham, the sales and marketing director at Taylor Wimpey, which ran the session. “We have 2,500 members in our club and we like to give them the sort of discounts that would normally be reserved for seasoned investors.”

It all sounded sweetly innocent and unthreatening, but I was struck by one thing. The punters, who were by now on the receiving end of a charm offensive from the smiley-faced sales staff, were being referred to as members of the “club”. Yet no enrolment appeared to have been carried out. It transpired that anyone who had ever bought a home from Wimpey could be a member of its “club”. So, too, could the people who had responded to the advertisement on the company website. In fact, this “club” was open to more or less anyone.

The members were a wide social mix. Many were dressed in baseball caps and leather jackets; some had toddlers in tow. None had the look of a property tycoon. What followed was surprisingly sober in tone - standard-issue, estate-agent dogma about the folly of trusting pension schemes or the stock market, buy-to-let being a far safer option. Demand for rentals, said the speakers, would remain strong because of the high divorce rate and the tranche of 20 and 30-year-olds who could not get on the property ladder.

It was all faintly disappointing. I had imagined I would witness the “hard sell” of legend. Later, I asked Ben Williams, an Edinburgh-based chartered corporate psychologist, to identify the sales strategies that were being employed. “The company has got across a sense of exclusivity,” Williams said. “The hotel is a high-status setting. They call it a ‘club' as if the investors have been specially chosen and use the term ‘seminar' to give it the cachet of high academic stature.”

It was only in the later stages that the speakers warmed up, becoming quite evangelical about the benefits of the scheme. Members would be able to buy off-plan, receive free newsletters and get advice on the best locations to buy. It was, throughout, a question of “what” they would buy “where”, not “if” they would buy at all. As for finance, typically the members would need to provide 15per cent of the purchase price, but if they did not have that, not to worry, equity from their own homes could be brought into play. It only remained for the sales director to caution that we would have to “move fast” to get the best properties. Then we were sent out to the sales teams in the corridor outside. It worked a treat - every sales desk seemed to be doing roaring business. Why the enthusiasm? “Because of group pressure,” Williams said. “People see that other people are interested in what's on offer and this enhances the attractiveness of the product.”

Nobody addressed one vital topic - the oversupply of apartments. No mention was made of the Knight Frank research that had just appeared showing investors' yields on new flats had fallen to their lowest levels in many cities. Nor did they mention that Knight Frank and Savills forecast only 3 per cent growth in 2008. Instead, our attention was drawn to the bargain prices. There were flats in Corby and Derby with 15 per cent price reductions; some in Greater Manchester and Bolton had 20 per cent off; and flats in Newport, Gwent and Cardiff Bay offered guaranteed rental incomes until 2010.

During the following few days I contacted experts and asked if they thought it wise to invest in mid-priced, buy-to-let apartments at that time. If not, these sales seminars were surely just a way of off-loading on novice investors the glut of apartments that were “sticking”.

“The days when a buy-to-let investor would remortgage a house to make a significant short-term profit are over,” said Marcus Dixon, at Savills. “It's increasingly difficult to get sufficient yield to cover investment.” Ed Stansfield, at Capital Economics, agreed: “I'd be reluctant to advise anyone to enter the buy-to-let market in these uncertain times,” he said. “Those that do will need to have very long investment horizons.”

Four months later, what hope for investors who took a punt on Taylor Wimpey homes that night? Last week Knight Frank stood by its prediction of 3 per cent growth in the market in 2008. Hometrack reported on February 25 that average property prices were down by 0.2 per cent with the annual rate of growth slipping to 1.4 per cent. It also stated that the greatest pressure on prices is being felt in the East, North West, Yorkshire, Humberside and Wales - the very areas where Taylor Wimpey, last October, was offering their most enticing deals.

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