Summer's over. Your bikinis, surf shorts, and sun tan lotions all retreat to your closet. Long, laid back days sitting by the pool while sipping ice-cold lemon tea are just but a distant memory now. The good news is that the summer heat is slowly melting away and the cool autumn breeze blows.

Bad news is... while trees are shedding their leaves, and the weather gets gloomier, so does the property market. Summer is traditionally the best season to buy and sell a house, with most houses filled with plenty of sunshine, outdoor activities, and blooming gardens.

Case in point: In the spring, all seven major house price indices showed monthly price hikes. That includes firms like Rightmove and Hometrack, which rely on estate agents' data. But just recently, Rightmove released its figures for September 2010 - a 1.1 percent drop in the average asking price for a property from last month, which means average asking price in the UK now stands at £229,767.

Savills, which so far has been accurate in its forecasts, predicts that house prices will end this year 2.5 percent lower than in January, with another one percent fall expected next year.

"You don't need to be a fortune teller to predict what cards a seller can play. Unless their property is a bit of a rarity, the only cards left read 'chop the price' or 'spruce up the presentation," Miles Shipside, a director at Rightmove, told The Telegraph.

But beyond just retiling, replacing the carpet, or landscaping the front lawn, many people have gone to great lengths in order to sell their house. Stepehen Squires, a retired farmer, has been selling his eight-bedroom farmhouse near Okehampton in Devon for two years through several estate agents but to no avail. He has now turned to the Internet and is offering a £20,000 cash reward to anyone who introduces him to a buyer.

In South Carolina, in the United States, Hayward Hancock had planned to open up a comic book shop with his 40,000 comic book collection, but now that his family's house is in danger of repossession, that plan has to take a back seat. In a bid to raise £13,000 quickly to stop repossession, he, together with his family, held a yard sale and sold his precious comic books and everything else he could sell to save his family from living "out on the street."

If selling comics, supplying a year's worth of pizza and beer, or giving away a car don't work, Colin McKenzie of CM Property Search, has one simple suggestion: slash your asking price by at least a fifth to attract buyers.

"Three or four months ago, with boundless optimism, your agent suggested an asking price. Since then not only have the prime buyers passed you by, but mortgages have become harder to secure and confidence has fallen away. Corner your agent. Discuss reducing the guide price by 20 percent or more," McKenzie told The Telegraph.

But what if you can sell your house without having to share your profit with an agent, pay for legal and miscellaneous fees, and even be able to sell it at lightning speed? It sounds too good to be true but the service does exist. They are called "cash home buyers," who are essentially investors with cash available to readily purchase a property anytime.

It is the perfect deal for those seeking to sell their house as quickly as possible, whether it's because you're in financial difficulty, going through a divorce, stuck in a chain break, or need to relocate immediately for a job. And it doesn't even matter what condition your house is in, cash home buyers will buy it once you agree on a price.

What's the catch? You will have to sacrifice the sky high profit you have been hoping. Investors usually offer slightly below the market value of a property, but with the current state of the property market, you might have to lower your asking price anyway. So given the choice between being able to sell your house quickly and having to wait for a buyer and pay your agent commission - both at more or less the same price - it won't be too hard to make that choice, would it?