When gazumping returned last year, it was a sign that the property market was hotting up. But although gazumping – outbidding an accepted offer to snatch a property from a would-be buyer – has attracted plenty of attention, another symptom of buyers’ voracious appetites has gone unremarked.

That symptom is leafleting. People are typing up and printing off notes that say, in effect, “Please can I buy your house?” They push hundreds of these notes through letterboxes in their targeted area, then sit nervously waiting for the phone to ring.

“People are getting pretty desperate to get the house they want in the area they want, and they’re taking matters into their own hands,” says James Cotton, a mortgage specialist at London & Country, the mortgage broker.

An apparent rise in leafleting reflects the imbalance between supply and demand in the property market. Henry Pryor, founder of property website primemove.com, says the number of properties for sale is 20 per cent lower than last summer, and 40 per cent lower than this time last year. But the demand is still there.

As a result, many properties that come on the market are snapped up within days, and sometimes even hours. Frustrated househunters are using leaflets to try and catch sellers before they set foot in an estate agent’s office.

There are plenty of sob stories behind these leaflets, which often come from young couples. One couple took a day off work to go leafleting out of desperation after spending a year searching for their first property and seeing two deals fall through.

Another pair had their hearts set on a house but lost out to a bid from a developer whom they suspected was in cahoots with the estate agent, so they put leaflets through the doors of every other house in the same street.

This type of activity could be a sign of the late stages of a price bubble, however. Pryor, a veteran estate agent, says leafleting was a hallmark of the two previous peaks in the market.

From the seller’s point of view, there is one clear advantage in selling to a leafleter – you save thousands of pounds in estate agent’s fees, which range from 1 per cent to 3 per cent of a property’s value. Even if you split the saving with the buyer, you could easily save £4,000 on the sale of a £400,000 property. Cutting out the middleman is especially important because leafleting tends to be most widespread in areas with high demand for properties such as London, where estate agents’ fees tend to be at the upper end of the scale.

Pryor argues against selling to a buyer who has approached you directly – not surprising for an estate agent. He says: “If an estate agent brings just one additional bidder to the table, a competitive situation develops, and bids go up.”

He argues that as offers tend to go up in units of £5,000 or £10,000 for a £500,000 property, an agent can justify his fee if he brings the selling price just one notch higher.

On the other hand, leafleters may be wise to try and bypass estate agents, who only act in the seller’s interest, not the buyer’s. Pryor says buyers often become upset when they put in an offer “and the agent says ‘I know you’ve got to move and I know you’ve got another £25,000’.”

Nevertheless, some buyers may miss the presence of an estate agent, who after all is a professional who deals with transactions like this all the time. If you do bypass an agent, it is advisable to bring in a solicitor at an early stage to guide you through the process.

The valuation process is particularly important if you are in an agent-free transaction. In a conventional sale where hundreds of people see a property advertised, market forces should dictate that the selling price is about right. But in a private sale, there is much more potential for the buyer to overpay or for the seller to receive too little.

Both sides should use the plethora of relevant websites to research prices in their area. Look at sales sites such as primemove.com, rightmove.co.uk and propertyfinder.com to see asking prices for properties similar to yours, and a site such as houseprices.co.uk to find out how much properties actually sold for (the latter is also a way of finding out how much your friends, relatives and neighbours paid for their homes). Armed with this knowledge, you can turn to estate agents, who usually offer free valuations. But they may overvalue properties in an effort to drum up business, so get two or three valuations and bear in mind that they may be on the high side.

Ray Boulger, senior technical manager at mortgage specialists John Charcol, warns against relying on estate agents. “You need to spend some money on a surveyor,” he says. He suggests asking a mortgage broker or lender for a list of surveyors whose reports they accept, so you will not have to pay for a separate valuation for mortgage approval. A homebuyer’s report, which gives about 12 pages of information but falls short of a full structural survey, costs about £500 for a £180,000 property and about £900 for a £600,000 property.

Boulger says a private sale could involve a contract that gives the vendor a window of several months to move out rather than specifying a date – this could be suitable for someone who has received a leaflet and was thinking of moving in the near future but not immediately.

He also points out that home information packs, or Hips, which will become compulsory for property transactions from June, are not required for a private sale, thus saving a further £300 to £400.