Food writer chops £800,000 off price of £9.75m home

After six weeks on the market with more than 20 viewings and no suitable offers, she has lowered the price from £9.75 million to £8.95million.

"If I had put it on at £10 million this time last year, it would have been snapped up in a week," said Ms Karmel.

The property is for sale because of her divorce from husband Simon.

Ms Karmel has written 16 books on baby and children's food, sells a branded chilledfood range for children and became an MBE for her work in 2005.

She has already bought and moved into a new property.

Her old property in Elm Tree Road, which is being sold by Aston Chase, is a three-storey house with a walled front garden and off-street parking for up to six cars.

It has seven bedrooms but only one is ensuite. There are two bathrooms and three cloakrooms. On the ground floor there is a reception hall, reception room, garden room/conservatory, dining room, kitchen/breakfast room, summer house/games room and utility room.

The kitchen was built to Ms Karmel's specifications in limed oak by Smallbone and all her recipes were tried and tested there. Property experts say the house may not be selling because it is not stateofthe-art and does not have a master bedroom suite overlooking the garden.

It is seen as evidence that the credit crunch is now affecting all but the very top of the London property market, where prices range from £10 million up to £100 million. One investor who bought a studio flat in Pimlico for £175,000 at the height of last year's boom saw the value of his investment plummet by almost half.

Maurice Conroy, 43, from Chelsea, said his loss felt "like being hit in the stomach".