If you've ever spent a soul-sapping afternoon calling every builder in Yellow Pages, only to be met by indifference and answering machines, you will be pleased to hear that the balance of power is shifting in your favour. The value of your house may be slipping, but at least your builder will return your calls and you might even get that guttering fixed this side of Christmas.

It's not only construction workers who are feeling the cold, dead hand of the credit crunch. Domestic roofers, plasterers, decorators and bricklayers are becoming desperate for work as homeowners with higher mortgage repayments put off redecorating the lounge for another year. Those who choose improving over moving, however, increasingly will find that their builder is only too happy to negotiate.

“It is a good time to get a good deal from a good builder,” said Ron Wilson, director of the Federation of Master Builders (FMB) for the Yorkshire and Trent region, where the housing market is, according to one local estate agent, “shocking”. “Builders have been very busy for a long time, but things do appear to be slowing dow.”

Nor is it only northern householders who can cut a better deal with their decorator. Brian Berry, the FMB's director of external affairs, said: “Our last nationwide members' survey reported a fall of 40 per cent in the number of enquiries from homeowners. Builders will start to consider doing small jobs for householders that they might previously have overlooked, such as exterior decoration.”

Yet a shortage of skilled builders - with the construction industry in need of 87,500 new workers a year until 2011 - will prevent wages and fees falling too far.

Even Polish builders, who traditionally have undercut their British competitors, are feeling the pinch. Peter Lebchenko, who runs Polish Subcontracting, a company that specialises in London loft conversions, said that business had slowed. “Before December we were getting 100 enquiries a week. Then it dropped to a quarter of that.

“We're already more reasonably priced than our major competitors because they have higher overheads, and a lot of our workers work overtime without expecting overtime rates. So traditional firms will be suffering more than us.”

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