House prices in this country have been far, far too high for too long. I am a property owner, but despite this welcome drops in prices. When the next generation can't get a foot on the ladder, something is seriously wrong....

Sharon Sexton, bristol, England

Yes, the houses that have been sold have fallen in value by 16% .Many of these sales are distressed sales,; auctioned repossesions, relatives selling a deceased persons home. These will be a bigger percentage of the total sales than in a comparable period last year. Thereby distorting the figures.

B Hanson, Blackburn,

Falling house prices are devastating as far as inheritance is concerned as we shall all learn in future years.

john, milton keynes,

Falling house prices are not an important fact for owners who have owned their home for many years. If they want to change house, the price of an equivalent home to their present, will be the same value. Speculators are the losers. Recent buyers should have realized houses were overpriced.

Jim Wills, Brisbane, Australia

Good. Houses are for living in and should not be the centre of a speculative bubble. Now first time buyers should start to be in with a chance again

Richard, Bexhill, UK

Most people have not moved house in the last 5 years, so their mortgage deal is more important than the price tag of their house. If they released some capital and are now feeling the squeeze, they should list all the things they did with the money and hopefully feel a little happier.

Diana, Derby, uk

As banks are going back to the old style of mortgage lending - and even when the recession ends - of at least 10% deposit and on 3x (maybe 3 1/2x) earnings, the price of cheaper property has to drop far enough for first-time buyers. When the market bottoms out, I doubt that prices will rise much.

Andrew, St. Ives, Cambridgeshire,

this may be true in some parts of the country....but in the Home Counties ignorant sellers continue to insist that their perfectly ordinary suburban houses are worth upwards of half a million....wake up and smell the coffee people, u wanna sell, u gotta cut the price, it's not going to get better!

John, Esher,

Wow, £37,178 in a year and the financial crisis is only just getting started. At least another 2 years of these house price drops to come and accellerating all the time. Expect drops of 40% or more. Things that go up must always come down and boy are they coming down hard. Roll on 2010.

JJ, Lancaster, UK

no doubt over the course of the day you will all add your veiws and comments on what is going to happen although the usual bloke in the pub opinions will be made by thoose that didnt get rich on their predictions when it was going up but are now proffessional property commentators!!

Jon, Fleet, Hants

Well we have had an extraordinary boom, largely due to Brown's 'Age of Irresponsibility' and the MPC's 'Nice Decade' of artificially low interest rates only to be followed by an extraordinary bust. One cancels the other, plunging the UK economy to the brink of bankruptcy...

cww, Ipswich,

SHOCKAROONIE...........the madness is over.
Did we REALLY believe that it would go on forever unabated.......to the extent that the seller of the humblest terraced house in the SE could have soon elected to sell up and buy Perthshire, the Lake District...or whatever.
Painful times..but we need it

RUSSELL MORRISON, Inverness, Scotland