25 per cent - that's how much you need to cut your asking price to sell your home

ESTATE agents have identified a "tipping point" that they claim will bring buyers flooding onto the property market.

Homeowners willing to price their property at least 25 per cent below its peak value are swamped with offers, agency Savills said.

The company's Putney branch said that this month it had seen several "realistically" priced homes go to sealed bids after each spent only a week on the market.

Now the properties are expected to fetch more than the sellers asked.

Savills director Caroline Bell said: "The reaction is extraordinary when you get the price right. We're getting more than 10 viewings within a week of the price change in many cases, and then several offers. It's a situation people had stopped expecting.

"Properties sell when they are priced at their true value, which the market believes they're worth. That appears to be 25 per cent below a property's top price in the summer of 2007. There's a clear tipping point and people are increasingly putting their home up for sale at that price."

She said vendors were more willing to drop their prices after a year of stagnation in the property market.

A two-bedroom period terrace cottage with a courtyard garden and cellar in Wadham Road, near Putney railway station, had 12 viewings followed by seven offers at or above the guide price of £425,000 after only a week on the market.

Savills estimates the price represents a 26 per cent drop from the house's peak value of £575,000. It has now gone to sealed bids. Around the corner in Disraeli Road, a three-bedroom period townhouse with a large garden received four offers in the week after its price was slashed to £650,000.

This was £250,000, or 27.8 per cent, below the original asking price of £900,000 in October 2007. Its owners are also now taking sealed bids.

Lucian Cook, director of residential research at Savills, said the fact the market was clearing at 25 per cent below peak values suggested prices would not drop much below that in the long run.

Indexes suggest that so far, sale prices in London have dropped by between 17 and 18 per cent since their peak in August last year. But there have been few sales in recent months to provide further evidence.

Ms Bell said: "There's a lot of pent-up demand and as vendors decide they want to get on with their lives and sell we'll see things moving. They may sell for less than they hoped but they will probably buy for less than they expected as well." Mr Cook said prime central London property - worth between £1 million and £5 million - is likely to be at the forefront of the recovery because of an influx of overseas buyers, with prices hitting their lowest point by summer.

The weak pound, and a British property market which is falling faster than in many other countries, mean London homes are up to 40 per cent cheaper for foreigners than a year ago.

Today the Royal Institution of Chartered Surveyors said new buyer enquiries had risen for the third month in a row - the first time this has happened since the end of 2006.

Nearly half of buyers believe the bottom of the market is in sight, its research showed.