Every day Neil Kurz drives to work past the station in Aylesbury, Buckinghamshire, and an imposing block of new flats that sits next to it. There are “For Sale” signs everywhere but he knows there is little immediate prospect of the apartments finding buyers. Kurz is an estate agent and times have never been tougher.

When he arrives at his office he makes a cup of coffee. He checks for overnight e-mails and phone messages from prospective buyers, but most mornings there are none. More often than not, he has no viewings scheduled either. Within 15 minutes — the time it takes to drink the coffee — he has completed his day’s work.

Kurz’s small agency has sold only three houses in as many months and things are getting worse. “There is nothing under offer at the moment,” he said. “It’s the first time since we opened that this has been the case. Usually we would have about 10 properties under offer.”

Kurz may despair but at least he is still in business. Estate agents are closing at a rate of 150 a month, according to the business-monitor company Debtwire. Some 2,000 have shut in the past year, shrinking the number of agencies in the UK to 12,000.

Savills, one of Britain’s biggest, reported a 41% slump in profits a fortnight ago and has had more than 50% wiped off its share price in the past year. HBOS recently announced plans to close more than a quarter of its Halifax branches, with the loss of 500 jobs.

Foxtons, the London-based agency, has called in the investment bank NM Rothschild to save it only a year after it was bought by the private-equity group BC Partners. Humberts, one of the oldest estate agents in the country, went into administration earlier this year, with most of the branches bought by the Mercantile Group.

In Aylesbury, Kurz can name five agents that have closed in the past three months.

The situation is no better in the affluent commuter town of St Albans, 30 minutes away. Nick Salmon, commercial director of Harrison Murray, expects the town’s 21 agents to be halved in the coming year. By Christmas, he predicts a quarter will be out of business.

Salmon, who has more than 30 years’ experience, compares the current crisis with 1974, when the building societies restricted lending. He does not expect the government’s one-year stamp-duty “holiday” on properties worth up to £175,000 to make any difference.

“This is in effect a £1,750 cash windfall for the buyer and if that makes a difference between buying and not buying, then they shouldn’t be buying,” he said. He views the government’s efforts to help first-time buyers into new developments as nothing more than a way “to keep builders off the dole queue” .

Although transactions are down 20% in Harrison Murray’s St Albans branch, Salmon is still busy. With double the number of properties on his books, buyers are viewing more houses while sellers are demanding more advice.

Salmon has become ruthless about which sellers he takes on. “When somebody comes to me and says they want to sell, my first words are ‘Why on earth do you want to sell in this market?’ I will only take on a property when the vendor has a real reason to sell,” he said. He lists debt, death and divorce as “real reasons”.