Price of London homes 'falling by £1,000 a week'

1:47pm Tuesday 29th April 2008

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House prices have fallen by an average of nearly £45 a day since the beginning of the year, figures showed today.

Properties in Wiltshire have suffered daily slides of only £5.35 while the average value of a home in the UK has dropped by £44.39 a day or £310.73 a week so far during 2008 as the property market slows in the face of stretched affordability and the problems in the mortgage market caused by the credit crunch.

The pace of the falls has accelerated during the past 30 days, with homes seeing an average of £55.40 a day knocked off their value during this period, according to property valuation website Zoopla.co.uk.

Overall, the group said the average price of a home in the UK had fallen from £224,046 at the beginning of January to £218,764 on April 28.

People in London, where property prices are highest, have been the biggest losers, seeing an average of £133.58 a day or nearly £1,000 a week wiped off the value of their home.

Homeowners in Surrey have seen the second biggest falls of £96.41 a day on average, followed by those in the Isle of Wight at £96.12 a day.

Properties in Berkshire and Oxfordshire have seen seen falls of more than £90 a day, while homes in Devon and Middlesex have seen ones of more than £80 a day.

At the other end of the scale, homes in Hertfordshire have been affected the least by the downturn, seeing an average of just £5.25 knocked off their value on a daily basis.

Properties in Wiltshire have suffered daily slides of only £5.35 and homes in Cambridgeshire have seen £9.12 knocked off prices every day this year.

Unsurprisingly, detached homes have seen the biggest price falls, losing an average of £71.68 a day during the past 30 days, but flats in England have actually seen their prices rise by an average of £2.84 a day since the beginning of the year after suffering price falls towards the end of 2007.

• The research was based on Zoopla's own data, which calculates house prices using an algorithm that takes into account house prices, economic trends and property characteristics in given geographic areas.