There is growing evidence of a noticeable fall in house prices in many areas of France.

Over the past few months all the signals have turned to red in a deepening crisis in the housing market in France, with estate agents and notaires in France reporting a slump of around 20% in the volume of sales.

There has also been a similar fall in the number of new homes being built.

Although to date prices in many areas have resisted following suit, there are glimpses of some significant falls in house prices, particularly in rural areas.

In their recent review of the housing market for the third quarter of this year, FNAIM, the national association of French estate agents, reported that house prices had fallen by an average of 1.3% over the past year.

Indeed, there is a unusual degree of unanimity on the state of the market, for in their own recent review the notaires reported that prices had on average fallen by 1.5% over the same period.

Such figures do suggest house prices have continued to resist the substantial fall in sales.

However, drill down and it is clear that in some regions of France prices have fallen by as much as 8% in the past year, with greater falls in some outlying rural areas.

According to FNAIM, the largest falls have occurred in Brittany (-7.9%), Lower-Normandy (-6.9%), Lorraine (-6.7%), Champagne-Ardenne (-5.6%) and Upper-Normandy (-4.9%). Even in the traditional hotspot of Languedoc-Roussillon house prices are down by nearly 3% over a year.

Against the backdrop of economic malaise and a decline in living standards such falls are hardly surprising.

FNAIM argue that the position has been made worse by major fiscal changes that have been introduced over the past couple of years, notably by the withdrawal of government sponsored interest free loans on existing older property for first time buyers. The lack of access to these 'prêt à taux zéro' has simply pushed many potential buyers out of the market.

Although mortgage rates at around 3.5% are now at nearly an all-time low, the banks have toughened their lending criteria and buyers are more cautious, with the result that mortgage lending is down by a around 30% in the past year, a record fall.

Howevever, the problem for anyone trying to make sense of what is happening to house prices is that most of the reporting is based on what is occurring within urban areas, where the similarity of properties and the volume of transactions provides the raw data for some analysis to be undertaken.

By contrast, the lack of sales volume and the heterogeneous nature of the rural property market means it is difficult to obtain clear information on what is happening to the market in country properties. The only certainty is that prices just about everywhere are on a downward trend.

So both amongst the estate agents and the notaires there is a growing shyness about coming up with anything but the skimpiest of reviews of price trends outside of the Parisian basin or the major conurbations.

This reticence has been accompanied by a significant technical change in the reporting of regional house price trends by the French notaires. They have now abandoned the use of arithmetic 'mean' for reporting average price changes in favour of a 'median' average over the period of their reviews.

Mathematicians amongst you will know that the median average is merely the number in the middle of a group of numbers, not the mean of a group of numbers.

With this health warning, what the latest figures from the notaires show is that over a longer 4 year period to the second quarter 2012 house prices in France have fallen by 3%, but with significant variations between departments.

Largest falls have been in Creuse in the Limousin (-15.7%), but there have also been double digit falls in Loir-et-Cher (-12.5%), Moselle (-11.5%), Correze (-10.8%), Tarn (-10.6%), Haut-Rhin (-10.5%), Côtes-d’Armor (-10.3%), Bas-Rhin (-10.3%), and Haute-Vienne (-10%).

Those departments that have continued to show positive growth over the past 4 years are Haut-Garonne, Gironde, Indre, Savoie and Haut-Savoie.

The table below, provided by the notaires, shows the median average price of house in each region of France for the second quarter of 2012.

The definition of 'rooms' in the table excludes the kitchen, bathroom and toilet, which need to be added to give the actual total number of rooms in the property.