The recovery of the housing market will be slow, the Rabo bank said on Monday in its quarterly report on the subject. The bank expects prices to fall this year by 1.5% and rise in 2011 by 1%.

The bank says house prices will only recover when people rediscover their trust in the housing market. One problem is the uncertainty about mortgage tax relief which will only be solved when a new cabinet is installed.
One encouraging sign is that in the first six months of 2010 60,000 houses were sold, around 2,000 more than in the year earlier period.