Brakes go on the housing market as demand stalls

In Nottinghamshire, David Hammond said: “More sales activity but this is not translating into price increases. New mortgage criteria are causing delays and defaults on sales.”

Another survey – from Home.co.uk, which takes its data from almost all UK portals and agents’ websites – found house prices edged up just 0.1% last month but fell in the south-east, south-west, East Anglia and Yorkshire.

According to Home, price rises were modest in other regions at 0.2% or less, apart from in the east midlands where they rose 0.5%.

Supply of property for sale rose last month in all regions apart from East Anglia and the south-west.

Across Greater London, supply was up 39% compared with a year ago.

Despite the uptick in supply, Home says that the total number of properties currently for sale is “much less” than for most of the last seven years.

Home director Doug Shephard said: “Buyer demand is certainly lower than it was before the financial crisis of 2007, but supply remains very low indeed.”

He said supply has increased by only 6% in the last 12 months across the UK as a whole.

He said that such a modest increase in supply would be “hardly likely to cause a crash” but “will help tame price rises”.