LONDON (Reuters) - Housebuilder Bovis Homes <BVS.L> issued a profit warning on Tuesday, adding to signs of a sharpening slowdown in the housing market and sending its shares down 5 percent.

Bovis said the consequences of the global credit squeeze -- with bank's reining in lending, raising mortgage rates and demanding higher deposits from borrowers -- were all putting off buyers.

Its comments echoed those late last month from Persimmon (LSE: PSN.L - news) <PSN.L>, the country's biggest housebuilder by market value, and chime with recent survey evidence suggesting a rapid deterioration in the country's housing market.

HBOS <HBOS.L> said on Friday that house prices fell 1.3 percent in April from March and were down 3.7 percent on the year, the steepest annual fall in 15 years.

"Conditions in the housing market have deteriorated sharply," Bovis said in a trading statement.

"The board now expects that the group's results for the first half of the year to June 30, 2008, will be significantly lower than it had previously anticipated and that with ongoing market uncertainties, the outlook for the remainder of 2008 is difficult to predict."

Landsbanki analyst Simon Brown said he had been expecting a 38 percent decline in first-half earnings per share.

"This now looks to be nearer 55 percent to 15.4 pence," he said. "The dividend may now be under threat."

At 9:30 a.m., Bovis shares were down 5.2 percent at 446.75 pence, valuing the firm at about 539 million pounds.

The stock has fallen almost two-thirds in value over the past year as shares in housebuilders have been hammered by fears that a longstanding housing boom is finally coming to an end.

Bovis said reservations for new homes since it released full-year results on March 10 had been disappointing, with the total achieved so far this year down 30 percent on the year at 1,382 homes.

"If the recent more difficult conditions in the housing market persist, and the level of reservations, allied with the increase in cancellation rates, seen in recent weeks does not improve, the group will not be able to achieve a volume of legal completions in 2008 that falls within the range of the board's expectations at the time of the preliminary results announcement," it said.

(Additional reporting by Mark Potter; Editing by Louise Ireland and Jason Neely)