Home buyers are now paying nearly 97% of the asking price of a property, marking the highest average percentage seen in nearly 12 years, property analyst Hometrack has reported.

But there are early signs that the London market is starting to soften, amid evidence that buyers are becoming less willing to meet sellers' prices in the face of the recent strong hikes in house values seen in the capital, the report for April said.

Across England and Wales, prices rose by 0.6% month-on-month in April, which is the same increase seen in March - and the time it takes to sell a property has fallen to just over six weeks on average, marking the quickest time period for homes flying off the market seen since June 2007.

At 96.7% on average, the proportion of the asking price that house sellers are achieving has leapt to its highest level since September 2002, Hometrack said.

House prices lifted month-on-month by 0.8% in London and the South West, by 0.7% in the South East and East Anglia, by 0.5% in Wales and Yorkshire and Humberside, by 0.3% in the East Midlands, the West Midlands and the North West and by 0.2% in the North East. Hometrack said that demand in the housing market is continuing to grow at a faster rate than the supply of homes coming on the market, which is keeping an upward pressure on house prices.

Outside London, 48% of postcodes registered higher prices in April, which is the most widespread coverage of house price rises for a decade. The greatest declines in the time it takes to sell a property over the last year have been seen in East Anglia where it is now just under five weeks, the South East where it is now just over four weeks and Wales, where it now takes around six weeks to sell.

Recent Office for National Statistics (ONS) figures showed that London house values have surged by 17.7% over the last year to reach £458,000 on average, while the UK as a whole has seen a 9.1% annual increase.