Homebuilder shares tumble as UK housing market weakens – as it happened

A profit warning from housebuilder Crest Nicholson compounded fears of a housing market slowdown, as Rightmove data revealed a further drop in asking prices

AJ Bell investment director Russ Mould said that while weak house price data (as was hardly a surprise", Crest Nicholson's profit warning has laid bare the the scale of the impact of a housing slowdown on the housebuilding sector."

Sales of new homes have plunged alarmingly and, while not all developers in the space are created equal, the news, allied to Rightmove's latest reading on the property market, has had a knock-on effect on share prices in the rest of the sector this morning.

The 7,000 drop in the average asking price observed by Rightmove in the last month, allied to a big drop in transaction volumes, is the kind of statistic to make estate agents distinctly uneasy.