The Council of Mortgage Lenders, whose house price forecasts have been among the UK’s most optimistic, on Tuesday threw in the towel, saying conditions were too difficult to make predictions, and that no improvement was likely until 2010.

The CML’s last forecast, made in May, was for prices to be 7 per cent lower in the fourth quarter than last year. Indices from Halifax and Nationwide, both CML members, suggest that prices are already down by more than 10 per cent on the year.