Many homeowners have suffered the anguish of trying to sell in a weak market, but imagine if your business was building homes and trying to offload them during the current mortgage famine. Britain’s housebuilding sector has had its worst recession in decades.

In the final quarter of last year, the number of homes being started was barely more than a third of that at the peak two years earlier. Thousands of construction jobs have been shed and the share prices of many quoted housebuilders have collapsed.

So what is happening? We have seen a flurry of trading statements from housebuilders, mostly cautiously optimistic. Take Persimmon, which sells under the Persimmon Homes, Charles Church and Westbury Partnerships brands. In the first half of the year it sold just over 4,000 homes, while its house prices declined 4%, though in many areas they have now stabilised. That is roughly consistent with the Halifax’s latest figures, which showed prices down 0.5% in June but marginally higher than in March. Persimmon’s forward sales for the next six months stand at £700m, up from £458m at the start of the year. The cancellation rate, 16%, has fallen and is at a record low — fewer sales are falling through. Persimmon has also offloaded most homes it has taken in part exchange. The company may add to its landbank, though it notes a shortage of building land at attractive prices. So things are slowly getting better, though with the obligatory caveat that mortgage availability needs to improve before a return to anything like normality. Savills suggests savvy builders are “drip-feeding” the market with new properties to support prices.

What about new developments? Alan Cherry, chairman of Countryside Properties, thinks bank funding — traditionally a key source — could remain subdued for years ahead. The future may lie with joint public-private developments, although the public sector is also strapped for cash.

So housebuilding is going to take time to get back into its stride — good news for those who do not want new developments in their backyard, but bad news for builders and those concerned about an adequate supply of new homes. The National Housing and Planning Advice Unit warns supply shortages will become “increasingly severe”.

nFoxtons has been rapped on the knuckles. Last week the High Court agreed that some of the charges the estate agency imposes on landlords are unfair. The Office of Fair Trading (OFT) said clauses in the small print of Foxtons’ contracts for managing tenanted homes were a “trap”; they had demanded an 11% renewal commission if a tenant stayed beyond the initial one-year tenancy, and 2.5% of the value of the property if the tenant went on to buy it.

* Spain is an increasingly attractive destination for those looking for overseas property bargains, according to a survey by the property website Rightmove. It says Spain accounts for 21% of its searches, up 9.6% on last month; interest is also growing in Turkey, with the Bodrum peninsula the most popular. Dubai has suffered a sharp drop in its appeal, as a result of legal uncertainities and falling prices.