Property market 'not completely recovered from recession'

Posted: 29 Jan 2010 12:26:51 GMT

The UK property market has not yet made a full recovery from the damage that was caused by the worldwide economic downturn, one expert has suggested.

Paul Holmes, chief executive of Firstrung, says that the housing market is only halfway through the process of property prices recovering to their pre-recession levels.

"The only reason house prices didn't fall further last year was all the rescues for the banks and the artificially low interest rate," he states.

His comments come in response to recent statistics from moneysupermarket.com, which revealed that there are now more home loan products available to those wishing to take out a mortgage.

There are now 22 per cent more 85 per cent loan-to-value deals on the market than in December 2009, while rates across all mortgage products have fallen.

Mr Holmes states that he thinks some of the optimism surrounding the UK housing market coming out of the recession is "statistically negligible" because he does not class a 0.1 per cent growth as a recovery.

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