Your house is losing £100 a day as prices fall by nearly 13% and interest rates are frozen

Since March the price of a typical home has tumbled from £191,590 to just over £174,000.

It means taxpayers on a monthly salary of around £2,000 are earning less at work than they are losing on their homes.

Record low: New figures show house prices have fallen 12.7 per cent since last August but the Bank of England is still refusing to cut interest rates

The alarming findings from the Halifax saw critics renew their attack on Prime Minister Gordon Brown's £1.6bn plan to revive the housing market.

The 12.7 per cent drop is the biggest fall the lender has recorded since it started its monthly survey 25 years ago.

The maximum saving from Mr Brown's stamp duty changes is £1,750 - less than the typical home is dropping every 18 days.

Philip Hammond, Shadow Chief Secretary to the Treasury, said: "This is more evidence that this is a short-term political rescue package for Gordon Brown rather than a long-term plan to revive Britain's ailing economy."

No end in sight for homeowners: The Bank of England has held interest rates for the fifth consecutive month

Halifax's gloomy house price survey came as the Bank of England ignored calls for an emergency cut in borrowing cuts to resuscitate the faltering economy.

The decision to keep interest rates steady at 5 per cent for the fifth month in a row is bound to deepen the gloom engulfing the property market.

House prices tumbled by 1.8pc during August, are now down 12.7 per cent compared with the same month last year, according to the Halifax.

The first double-digit drop in the 25-year history of the Halifax survey underlined the deepening malaise in the housing market.

The plunge in property prices means that the millions of homeowners who have bought houses since February 2006 are now out of pocket.

Britain's biggest mortgage lender warned that the property market would remain "challenging" due to the credit crunch and the unprecedented squeeze on household budgets.

With unemployment rising, mortgages thin on the ground and the economy expected to tip into recession, many economists believe that house prices could plunge by 30pc by the end of 2009.

Even a decline of 25 per cent would see the average house price plunge to £147,500 from the high of £199,612 in August, 2007.

Seema Shah at  Capital Economics said: "The slump in housing market activity points to even sharper falls in the coming months."

"With neither the economy nor the labour market likely to offer any support to the economy over the next year or two, it is difficult to see what will put an end to this correction."

However, some respite could be in store for households, who are reeling from painful rises in the energy and food bills.

The Bank of England is widely expected to begin cutting rates before the end of the year as inflationary pressures ease.

And with oil and commodity prices sliding, the Bank should be able to cut borrowing costs twice more next year, taking the rate down to 4.25 per cent from 5 per cent now.

Ian McCafferty at the Confederation of British Industry said: "As the autumn unfolds, the chances of a rate cut will increase, as the slowdown improves the inflation outlook for next year."