Estate agents sell 7 homes in three months

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Data from the Royal Institute of Chartered Surveyors show that nationally agents are selling less than one property a week.

But in London the weekly figures were even worse - on average, estate agents sold only seven properties in the three months to the end of last month.

The number of homes being sold has now dropped to the lowest level in 30 years. Agents in the South-East and South-West averaged nine sales during the same three months.

Estate agents have also said that the outlook for the property market this year remains "extremely bleak" amid rising unemployment and a lack of affordable mortgages.

At the beginning of last year Rics said estate agents were selling 23.9 properties every three months, compared with 32 at the beginning of 2004.

That figure has now dropped to 10 in three months, the lowest since Rics records began in 1978.

A spokesman for the institute said: "Buyer interest is now at levels not seen since 2006 but without mortgage finance the housing market is at a standstill and transaction levels at an all-time low."

The Bank of England has reduced interest rates from five per cent to a historic low of one and a half per cent but there is little sign of the cut filtering through to property sales, financial experts have warned.

An estimated 32,000 estate agents have lost their jobs since the start of the credit crunch and the future of London's biggest estate agency chain Foxtons has been thrown into doubt.

The Standard previously revealed that as many as 50,000 estate agents could find themselves out of work by autumn -more than double estimates made before the economic crisis worsened.