Leading the charge is Sequre, a Manchester-based firm established in April 2013 by Graham Davidson. After spending his career working for vendors, Davidson saw a gap in the market for an agency that helped buyers.

“I had been in property sales for 25 years, starting in the countryside and then moving into the new homes sector,” he explains. “I understood the market, but was constantly frustrated by the lack of time that I was able to dedicate to building my own portfolio. I was just too busy working.”

_{Growth markets: Leeds, York (pictured), and up and coming parts of London offer good prospects for investors (ALAMY)}

Then in 2008, Davidson spotted an opportunity. “After years of doing well, suddenly developers could not sell their properties. Their homes were not breaking even. I wanted to turn the tables and become a buyers’ agent rather than a sellers’.”

Of course, buying agents who promise the world are nothing new, but usually they require an upfront fee. All of Sequre’s services are free up to completion, at which point there is a £2,500 flat fee. They investigate opportunities, conduct due diligence, and present them to their database of potential clients. Currently, there are 7,500 on the books. When enough buyers are interested, they take a proposal to the property owner – usually a bank or a developer who is motivated to sell.

“We are transparent,” he says. “If you don’t want to buy, you can wait until the next offer comes along.

“Many people looking to get into buy-to-let market focus on the area around where they live,” he adds. “But that might not be the best place for them to invest. We focus on finding high-yield, low-maintenance properties with high rental demand and the potential for capital growth.”

Studio apartments start at about £65,000, so with usual buy-to-let lending rates of three times the deposit, investors can get a piece of the action for as little as £20,000. He says a recent discount was from £139,950 to £112,500 per property. Many of the apartments come furnished, which is easier to let, and plenty come already tenanted.

The approach only works as long as there are areas with oversupply of property. “Most of our opportunities are in the Midlands and North-west,” adds Davidson. “There, we can still get up to 20 per cent off the original price. It’s much harder to find that kind of opportunity in the South-east.”

There are also high-yield, unfussy openings in places such as Leeds, Birmingham, Liverpool and York, with various different agents.

Businesses such as these depend on the quality of the database. A model with no upfront fees is potentially a recipe for timewasters. So far, however, growth has been strong, thanks to investors such as Tom McKay. He is proof that some enterprising young people are getting not only on the first rung of the ladder, but going up the buy-to-let route, too.

McKay, 22, is on the cusp of completing not one, but three buy-to-let properties. They are all similar one-bedroom apartments in the centre of Manchester, priced at around £100,000.

_{Trading up: Tom McKay, serial investor (JULIAN ANDREWS)}

“The London market is dominated by cash buyers,” he explains. “It’s difficult to get more than 4 or 4.5 per cent yield. There is good capital appreciation, but it is not so good if you want short-term liquidity and rental income.

“People and companies are looking to the big cities. For example, the BBC has moved to Salford, Manchester. And while you might be able to get a better return in the middle of the countryside, you don’t get the same security.”

If he seems young to be so involved in the market, then McKay is older than his years in other ways, too. “I didn’t go to university,” he says. “On my gap year I worked, and at the end of that I didn’t want to go where everyone is partying all night. My mates were at uni and they told me that it was a waste of time. I’m not interested in sleeping all day.

“I wasn’t very academic, either, but I have always been fascinated by finance, by the art of turning £1 into £1.50 or £2.”

Tom bought his first property in 2010, when he was working at a financial magazine. “I bought it in Lambeth, south London, using all my savings – I had worked weekends when I was at school.

“I was lucky – it was a good time to buy. Since then the development at Elephant & Castle and Nine Elms has helped push the value up. I remortgaged the flat last year, when the value had risen considerably, and used the money to buy commercial land in Surrey.”

It is with the income from the plot that Tom has been able to go in to Sequre. Despite this, he says he has no plans to become a full-time investor just yet. “It’s a hobby, really,” he explains. “For the time being I like working for someone else.”

Tom might be unusually precocious, but he is not alone in looking for new ways to make his money go further. And Sequre (sequre.co.uk) are far from the only firm offering this kind of service. Principal International (principalinternational.co.uk) and Select Property (selectproperty.com) are just two other buying agencies who find good deals for possible buyers on their databases.

With the Governor of the Bank of England, Mark Carney, announcing that the base rate of interest would stay low for a number of years, and new house-building still limited, it seems unlikely that there will be a sudden fall in prices any time soon. For buyers with enough money to enter the market, London presents good capital growth, particularly in up and coming areas such as Croydon or Stratford.

Wherever you are looking, however, it always pays to be cautious when using a buying agency, explains Neal Hudson of Savills. “Property costs in the Midlands and the North are high too,” he says, “but there is not quite the same pressure you have in the South-east.

“Usually the maximum you can borrow on a 90 per cent mortgage is four or four-and-a-half times your income. This is nowhere near the six or seven times your income that the average house costs. This is part of the reason why early figures suggest that the mortgage guarantee element of the Help to Buy scheme has been taken up more outside the capital.”

While prices might be more affordable for first-time buyers in the north of England, Hudson says it is important to do your homework before entering into any deal with an agent.

“You definitely want to make sure you have an independent valuation done on the property,” he adds. “Otherwise you can never be sure that the discount you are getting is real. You also need to be certain that there are no conflicts of interest.”

We all dream of making our money work harder and, for many, property is a focal point. Young people in particular dream of getting on the ladder. But the British housing market can seem sealed off to those who don’t have help from their parents. Many find themselves paying high rents to landlords and not saving – which further worsens their situation.

Buying agencies can give more leverage to the average purchaser, and – in theory at least – open doors for those prepared to be bold. As ever, care must be taken, but the theory is sound – why compete against other buyers, when you could work with them instead?

www.telegraph.co.uk