Despite the patchy recovery, HMRC data out today also showed a 3% increase in residential transactions on the same period last year.
Seasonally adjusted figures show there were 82,320 transactions in January, the highest tally since March 2012.
Ben Thompson, MD Legal & General Mortgage Club, said: “While constraints on credit do remain and we expect the volume of transactions to remain broadly flat over the course of 2013 things are slowly starting to claw their way back to something approaching ‘normality.’
An L&G report in conjunction with CEBR showed average home values are expected to return to pre-crisis levels of £227,000 by the year 2015, and hit £254,000 by 2017.
“Our hope is that lenders will be seeking to do more business this year and that we will begin to see an upward and sustained momentum that will start to take us towards a healthier housing market overall,” said Thompson.
