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There was another sign that the housing market is regaining momentum last Friday, when Bovis Homes announced a remarkable 92 per cent increase in reservation levels on private new homes. During the first six months of 2009, the company had 901 properties reserved, well in excess of expectations, and thanks to "signs of stabilisation", according to an official statement. The average selling price is still over £35,000 lower than this time last year, although Bovis claims it will have a debt-free balance sheet by the end of this year.

However, the news must be taken in context of a sluggish mortgage market, which the housebuilders readily acknowledge as a critical obstacle. All the major builders have declared that a full recovery in the UK housing market can only happen with widely available mortgage finance. Bovis Homes believe that the housing market will see "a continuation of low levels of activity constrained by ongoing illiquidity in the mortgage market" in the short term, while Barratt Developments' chief executive Mark Clare concurred last Friday: "We are not going to see a sustained improvement in trading conditions until the availability of mortgage finance, particularly in the higher loan to value segment, recovers."