By Tony Booth

Most investors probably have much the same opinion of developer incentives as myself - nothing comes free - and anything that seems to be free is likely to have been built into the price somewhere along the line.

But we are currently in one of the most restrictive new-build property markets there has ever been and construction firms aren't merely feeling the pinch - they are suffering huge losses - and even giants in the industry are starting to buckle under the strain.

At the end of April, Britain's biggest house-builder, Persimmon, announced it had abandoned all plans to build on new sites until the mortgage drought was over.

It admitted it couldn't sell the stock it already had on its books and complained that the volume of potential buyers was shrinking away at a record rate. At the same time, £420m worth of share value disappeared from five of the biggest developers - these were Barratt, Taylor Wimpey, Persimmon, Berkeley Homes and Bellway.

In this extraordinary climate, the prices of new-build properties are tumbling fast.

Some are down by a derisory 5 to 10 per cent, while others have been slashed by a more realistic 30 per cent.