Lenders have lifted their forecasts for housing transactions this year.

At the start of 2014, the Council of Mortgage Lenders was predicting 1.14m house sales. It is now forecasting 1.23m.

It thinks transactions will dip slightly next year to 1.15m.

Both sets of figures are well ahead of the market lows between 2008 and 2012, when there were under a million house sales annually.

However, they are also below the highs of 2006 and 2007, where there were over 1.6m transactions, while in the late eighties there were over 2m sales.

The CML says that as far as house prices are concerned, household demand “may start to fade as affordability pressures intensify”.

It does not expect to see this happen until next year, but suggests that further gains this year may be modest.

The CML says that we may have “already had the big recovery story”.

Meanwhile, property consultancy CBRE said that it expects house price inflation this year to hit 12%. However, like the CML it expects house price growth to slow towards the end of this year.

However, Britons appear to be increasingly sure that house price growth will continue.

According to a new Zoopla survey of nearly 8,000 home owners, 92% expect house prices to rise over the next six months, predicting 7.6% annual inflation.

The survey did, however, flag up concern over mortgage availability following the Mortgage Market Review.

* According to the Bank of England, mortgage approvals for house purchase were slightly down in June at 67,196 compared with a monthly average of 68,240 over the previous six months.