House prices are poised to fall almost a third from their peak last year to reach values last seen in September 2003, says one of the country’s leading estate agents.

Knight Frank said on Wednesday that the market was halfway through a price correction, with about 15 per cent already wiped off the price of an average home in the UK. But the expected peak-to-trough decline of about 30 per cent would mean that prices would continue to fall until late 2009.