You don't have to look far to find news stories about the hot property market. Some houses are being snapped up virtually before they've even hit the market.
I've been to open homes myself lately where the queue of people waiting to get in stretched out the door and the frazzled real estate agent has had to apologise for not having enough brochures on hand.
You can understand then why some buyers get desperate. If you've fallen in love with three or four properties and watched them all sell to someone else, you start to get worried.
What if you never get a place? What if you spend the next five years ordering building report after building report and paying for valuations - only to see the house sell at auction to someone else?
It's these kinds of thoughts that are driving people to skip some of the due diligence that should be involved in buying a property. We are hearing more and more that people are giving it a miss - either because they want to make their offers as appealing as possible, or because they are tired of paying for reports on places they do not end up buying.