Karl Dixon, a director at BPK, said: "People who have children and families are offloading their homes, selling them at auction and taking a hit on the price if they're financially comfortable enough to do that.

"They're moving on to other places because they just can't deal with the anxiety and stress of thinking about it (their home flooding) again.

"It depends on you as a person. If you're a young lad and you're living in one of the flats that were flooded, and I know a couple of lads who do, they're not particularly bothered.

"But the flats are only worth about £60,000 or £65,000 whereas if you're a family in a house, you'd be quite scared that the flooding would happen again when you'd invested so much time, money and love in the home.

"The bigger a house you've got, the bigger the repercussions."

The flooded properties that have been sold have mainly been auctioned, so BPK has not handled many, but Mr Dixon has noticed that they have plummeted in value.

"The value of the properties have, as expected, dropped," he said. "It's a mixed bag. I don't want to specify areas but I went out to a house a few weeks ago that I valued before the floods at £215,000 and I valued it now at £150,000.

"Then I went to another house which we were selling for around £160,000 before the floods and I valued it at £125,000.

"That's probably because it wasn't that higher value a property in the first place. Logically the way it works is that the more your house is worth before the flood, obviously the more you're going to lose in percentage terms.

"But that's not why it happens, in my opinion. It's just the higher risk. It's like investing more of your money is a gamble. The more expensive the property, the higher risk it is in case it floods again."

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