Sadly, multi-million pound luxury London properties are now unaffordable for most investment bankers

Bonus time used to be an opportunity for (senior) investment bankers to splash out on, among other things, a luxury property. Now, with most of it deferred or tied up in stock, they're suffering the ignominy of having to take out a mortgage.

To some extent, banks' reduced capacity to pay the majority of annual bonuses in cash has been offset by larger base salaries. However, banks' stricter mortgage lending criteria is extending to the luxury property market and, despite a large salary, bankers' new inability to pay for house or flat has hampered their buying power.

Jo Eccles, director of estate agent Sourcing Property (and who claims to have 60% of her clients from the financial sector), said: "Those who aren't buying property with cash are still finding it hard to secure finance, even if they are in a stable, well paid job. One of our JP Morgan clients recently complained that although she is in the top 1% of earners in the UK, she's still seen as high risk by estate agents and sellers as she's not paying 100% cash, which so many overseas buyers are."

Research by Knight Frank certainly suggests that, in the early part of the year, bankers have usually dominated the London prime property market. In 2008, they accounted for 28%, which increased to 36% in 2009, 45% in 2010 and then...around 25% this year.

Sadly, this shunning of the property market is likely to continue next year. Aside from the increasing redundancies in the sector, any prospects of further base pay rises are unlikely, and the amount of money accrued for compensation is shrinking.

Deutsche Bank and Morgan Stanley seem to be in the unique position of setting aside more money for their investment bankers. Compensation is down 20% at UBS and 9% at Goldman Sachs, for instance.

Still, figures from what types of property investment bankers are buying are unlikely to elicit much sympathy from Joe Public. On average, City buyers are paying 900k-1.2m for a two bedroom flat or - if they're a little older with children - have budgets in the region of 2-3.5m.

Eccles says that the first category are "typically those who have been renting and haven't yet bought anywhere, so they're purchasing at a much higher level than the average first time buyer. They tend to be in their early thirties, and male clients are either buying for themselves or with a girlfriend, whereas our female clients buying at this level are usually single and purchasing for themselves."