PRICES of holiday homes up and down the NSW coast have plunged by as much as 20 per cent.

At Hyam's Beach, the Jervis Bay jewel reputedly with the whitest sand on the planet, real estate agents have had one of the hardest jobs in the world in recent months: offloading what has become an extravagance.

"If you'd said to me in January that property prices would fall another 10 per cent this year, I would have said you were crazy," said Chris Alison, a local real estate agent. "But in fact they have - maybe even more than that."

Mr Alison, who has not sold a house since August, says the financial crisis and uncertainty means times are extremely tough.

There have been properties passed in at auction, vendor bids, withdrawn sales. It's a common theme that Sydneysiders are increasingly becoming familiar with.

It is hard enough trying to sell property in the city at the moment, with auction clearance rates of about 40 per cent and a lot of property on the shelf. Imagine what it is like in the holiday-house market.

Hyams Beach is not alone. As belts tighten across the nation, it is the holiday home that is first to go, and listings of holiday homes are increasing. Agents up and down the coast talk of median price drops ranging from 10 per cent to 22 per cent, but some houses are selling for even bigger discounts than that. Louis Christopher, a SQM research analyst, says: "A lot of people have been wiped out on the sharemarket after using the equity in their homes as security, so now they're selling their lifestyle properties to meet their debts, and prices have fallen."

Bargains are there for the taking for astute buyers. Todd Gallant, Mr Alison's colleague at Hyams Beach Real Estate, sold a holiday cottage with beautiful water views to a Sydneysider for $730,000 last month.

"Two years ago an offer of $920,000 had been refused so a $200,000 discount would have to be considered a bargain, I would think," Mr Alison said.