The number of home owners choosing to sell is falling. It is now taking 11 weeks for sales to be achieved, according to Hometrack, the property data website, and sellers can hope to achieve on average only 90.9 per cent of their asking price.

Dispiriting tales from the frontline, and these sort of figures may dissuade potential sellers, but with patience, inventiveness and a stomach for accepting a lower asking price it is possible to achieve a successful sale.

Take my family: in May this year, as the pregnant clouds of the credit crunch cast an ever darker shadow, we put our house on the market. Three estate agents were summoned and, if not exactly breezy, they were enthusiastic about the condition and quality of our five-bed terraced house in Balham, South London. Yes, they said, the market was slowing, the price might be slightly too high, but, given time, we should get there.

We were impressed by all three agents. No spivvy salesmen with overly fragrant aftershave here in our solidly educated-urban catchment area. We enlisted Sullivan Thomas because they are an independent agent and know the local market. They would be on a level with us and potential buyers. If only there were any buyers.

Three months on, the market is now ice cold. In our area - euphemistically called the Nightingale Triangle by the estate agent trade - there are about 30 houses like ours on sale at a similar price. Between January and May 31 this year total sales of four-bed terraced houses in our area were...none. Such figures mean a frustrated Hills family. The house we bought nine years ago was our dream. Now the gorgeous view between the terraces behind us, the big Victorian windows, the luxury of being able to park outside, the proximity to great schools and, as the blurbs have it, the open spaces of Clapham and Wandsworth commons - all those elements that had estate agents beating to our door last year - seem meaningless.

It doesn't matter how lovely your home is; few people are confident they can get the mortgage to get on the housing ladder to buy the flats that will be sold to buy bigger flats that will be sold to buy houses that will be sold to buy our piece of 19th-century paradise. We did all the things that you're meant to do: painted the front door, spruced up the garden, bellowed at our children to keep the house tidy, and still nothing.

But this helped little. Agents report that multitudes of potential buyers are “unprocedurable” because so much of the nation has given up on buying and selling houses. When we went to look at houses in Buckinghamshire, our lack of an offer made us “unprocedurable”. For us, the way to remedy this was to drop the price. And drop it again.

The problem is that valuations are never a precise science - and in this current market this is ever more apparent. Jason Tebb of Chesteron explains the difficulty: “Agents set valuations partly according to what they believe they can achieve from buyers on their books, and a true valuation ultimately is what someone - and their lender - is prepared to pay. In one case, we sold a flat for £362,000 that had been on the market with another agent for £350,000 for three months with no interest. Poring over internet house prices can't prepare you for that.”

Dropping your price works only if you drop it before everyone with a similar property follows suit, a sensation not unlike walking off a cliff with your eyes shut - you know the result is going to be a nasty cold shock, but you don't know how cold or how much of a shock. And here you need a dialogue with the estate agent, because you are must drop low enough for buyers to know the price will still be competitive when they come to put their money on the table.

Now we are finally under offer. Our buyers have got an absolute bargain. But in this market, they won't have it any other way. They have got to be secure in the knowledge that they are buying something that will weather whatever the credit crunch throws at them over the next year.

And we have got to move on, too. In our heads we are in the fresh fields beyond the suburbs, skipping down wooded paths and enjoying the relative space, peace and schools of Buckinghamshire. It is only when you are trapped like this that you realise how much your dreams and aspirations are tied up to house purchases. And how important a free, and more importantly free-flowing, market is to fulfilling our dreams.

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