The slide in house prices is gathering pace, a survey suggests today, amid signs that housebuilders are digging in for a prolonged residential property freeze. Tulloch Homes, a medium-sized Scottish housebuilder, pulled plans yesterday for a £200 million flotation, and Taylor Wimpey is understood to have ordered a halt to any new land acquisitions.

Estate agents across the UK have ended the year bemoaning falling prices, buyers in retreat and the declining chance of a speedy sale. The latest survey by Hometrack, the housing data company, suggests that values have fallen by 0.3 per cent since November, the third consecutive monthly fall and the largest in almost two years.

Despite the calming of a once-overheated property market, new buyers are refusing to be enticed out. Their number was down 7.9 per cent this month, after a fall of 9.1 per cent in November and one of 6.4 per cent in October. At the end of a downbeat quarter, owners are tending to keep their homes off the market, with agents reporting 2.5 per cent fewer properties for sale. Agents, who six months ago were able to sell a home in less than six weeks, now say that properties are lingering on the market for an average of 8.3 weeks, the worst figure since the survey began in 2001.

Richard Donnell, the director of research at Hometrack, said: “The second half of the year has seen a major reversal in confidence on the back of higher interest rates and concerns over the outlook for the financial markets.”

Prices are still up 3 per cent compared with a year ago, but that rate of growth represents little more than half the 5.7 per cent reported at the start of the year. Prices are reported to be falling in 30 per cent of postcodes, a significant turnaround since March, when they were rising in 80 per cent of postal areas.

The worst performing areas this year have included South Yorkshire, Nottinghamshire and North Lincolnshire. Oxfordshire recorded the largest fall in values over the past three months, down 1.5 per cent. The strongest growth this year was seen in Central London, where values are up by 9.4 per cent in a year. But prices in Greater London and the South East, which had risen steadily for the first three quarters of the year, fell by 0.4 per cent in a month.

Tulloch abandoned its plans to float on the Alternative Investment Market, blaming the “challenging” housing market and the credit crunch. David Sutherland, the chairman and chief executive, who appointed Close Brothers to advise on the float this year, said: “Now is not the right time for a UK housebuilder to be going ahead with an AIM flotation.”

The Inverness-based Tulloch, which made operating profits of £13.2 million last year, said that it might consider selling a stake to a private equity buyer instead of a flotation.

Taylor Woodrow, one of Britain’s biggest housebuilders, apparently took the decision to freeze all land purchases in mid-October and has completed only on deals agreed before then.

Last week Capital Economics - among the most bearish commentators – said that it expected the present slowdown to persist throughout next year, with a fall of 5 per cent followed by another 8 per cent slide in 2009.

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