Cook warned delegates at the inaugural astl conference yesterday that whilst the market is moving in the right direction there it still has some way to go.
He said: “When you look at the divergence between London and the rest of the UK you can see that there won’t be, and isn’t, a bubble.
“UK housing transactions should be around 120,000 a month but at the moment we are running at around 55% or 65% of that.
“Transaction levels are ticking up but it can’t all be attributed to loans. “
Cook also told of a fundamental shift in the market towards cash purchases which he said are now at “an abnormally high level”.
He said: “The market is no longer funded by mortgage debt. Equity is the biggest funder of the market at present.”
In the first half of this year more than a third (35%) of house sales in England and Wales were made by cash buyers.
This represents an increase of 11% compared with the same period in 2012 and the number of people buying with cash today is at the highest point since 2008.
