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House prices have taken their worst battering since records began, a report published today reveals.

The study showed that prices are falling at the fastest pace for 30 years. It painted a picture of lower prices, few buyers and desperate sellers - with worse to come.

And the pessimism displayed by the estate agents and surveyors polled by the Royal Institution of Chartered Surveyors help make its monthly report the bleakest since they began in 1978.

They say house prices are falling in every region of England and Wales, with the majority falling at their fastest pace since the record started. The North, Yorkshire and Humberside, East Midlands, West Midlands, East Anglia, the South East, the South West and Wales are all on the black list.

But the East Midlands is experiencing the worst problems. Prices have been falling for the last 15 months. The speed of the decline is picking up, with prices falling at the ‘fastest pace in the survey’s history’ last month.

The survey found that 78.5% more surveyors reported a fall than a rise in house prices - the highest proportion since records began. The figure eclipses the last property crash of the early 1990s.

To make matters worse, agents expect prices to keep on falling in the next quarter, according to the influential report. Today’s study exposes problems in every area of the market. The number of homes sold between January and March was 22.4 per estate agent - close to the all-time low of 18.3, in 1992. Increasing numbers of homes are put up for sale, but few buyers are coming forward.

Over the last year, the number of unsold properties in estate agents’ windows has climbed 50%. Meanwhile, inquiries from buyers have fallen for 16 consecutive months.

The surveyors and estate agents who took part in the survey were extraordinarily pessimistic.

One predicted prices will fall 30% over the next three years. Another warned the situation is going to worsen, as the mortgage meltdown has only just started to take effect.

Another declared: ‘It is tough, very tough. Buyers are looking for rock bottom bargains. The market is yet to get worse before it gets better.’ And one said: ‘If we compare sales figures this March to 2007, 2006, 2005 etc then we can only describe the market as dire.’

Last week Halifax, the biggest mortgage lender, said prices slumped 2.5% in March, the largest drop in a month since the property crash of 1992.

Yesterday Jeremy Leaf, of the RICS, insisted that ‘a significant crash’ remains unlikely, unless the number of homes coming on to the market rises ‘dramatically’.

But Shadow Chancellor George Osborne said homeowners should prepare themselves for a ‘bust’. ‘We are in the bust bit after the boom bit, if you take the figures from the Halifax,’ he said.