Further sign of housing pick-up

Recently there have been signs of more interest from homebuyers

More evidence of a lift in housing market activity at the start of the summer has come from the latest figures released by the UK's tax authority.

Some 75,000 UK residential properties costing more than £40,000 were sold in June, up 15% on the previous month, HM Revenue and Customs (HMRC) said.

This was the highest level of activity for a year, but still much lower than that seen for most of the decade.

Seasonal factors were also shown to play a key part in the rise.

Mortgage lending

Figures published on Monday showed that the total amount of money lent for home loans in the UK rose sharply in June.

But the Council of Mortgage Lenders (CML) said that the rise - to £12.3bn in June from £10.5bn a month earlier - was largely reflective of seasonal factors.

The HMRC's provisional figures also shed light on the typical buoyancy in the housing market at this time of the year, as people show greater inclination to move during the early summer.

Stripping out seasonal factors, 65,000 sales were completed during June, down from a revised figure of 63,000 in May.

Even so, this seasonally-adjusted total was the highest since October 2008, but well down on the 140,000 seen in June 2007 before the housing market slump.

Less volatile quarterly figures from the HMRC showed that property transactions rose from 141,000 in the first three months of the year to 198,000 in the second quarter of 2009.

The seasonally-adjusted figure of 191,000 was almost identical to the position in the third quarter of 2008, and higher than the subsequent two quarters.