When the property market is hot, the sharks begin to circle; recognising the opportunity to fleece the rest of us out of our money. The problem with property scams (cartel of appreciation) is that they are hard to detect in advance and often perfectly legal. They are marketed convincingly and professionally, unlike the instantly recognisable scams we are used to in other walks of life. Property sharks are harder to pin down when the market is going up, but they are nowhere to be seen when the prices crashes.