Fresh optimism returned to the housing market yesterday as Rightmove, Britain’s biggest property website, reported a record number of visits and as official figures showed that some homebuyers believe that price falls have come to an end.

About 76,000 homes changed hands last month, according to HM Revenue & Customs (HMRC), the most since May last year and the fifth consecutive month of increase. The figure is up 17 per cent on the 65,000 sales in June.

Rightmove said that record levels of website traffic — with 3.2 billion page impressions in the year’s first half — indicated that price rises that had begun to show in January had sparked a rush of interest from bargain-seekers.

However, a lack of new homes for sale has resulted in a fall of more than half in the number of homes newly listed on the site, down from a peak of 167,000 two years ago to 82,700.

The website, which has a market share of 80 per cent, recorded the highest number of visitors in a day in its nine-year history on August 10, in the middle of the traditionally quieter summer holiday season. It said that 70 agents a month had been returning to the site since March, after the loss of about 300 a month at the end of 2008.

The increase in interest comes after six months of consecutive price rises recorded by Nationwide. Since February, the price of the average home has risen by 7.5 per cent to £158,871. Halifax said that prices had risen by 3.3 per cent since April.

Housing market experts called the rebound an “unexpected bounce” and added that the growth was still off abnormally low levels of turnover. They believe that there may be a reversal in the recent upturn in fortunes in the autumn, as owners put their properties on the market, breaking the lock on supply that has acted as a constraint on transactions.

HMRC’s figures show that the latest monthly transaction figures are still less than half the record high of 153,000 transactions that it recorded in December 2006.

Yolande Barnes, head of research for Savills, the estate agency, said: “Growth is driven off extraordinarily low levels. What we are now seeing is a recovery, but to normal recessionary levels. In September we are expecting more properties to come on to the market and that is when we might see a slowdown or even a subsidence in price rises.” Buyers still face a struggle to obtain a home loan and economists say that unemployment is expected to continue to suppress activity.

Even the buy-to-let market, which helped to power the housing bubble that burst two years ago, has been showing improvements. Yet there is evidence that the full force of lending to amateur landlords has yet to felt. The Chelsea Building Society disclosed that it had been the victim of widespread mortgage fraud and made a £41 million provision in the year’s first half to cover dubious loans, leading to a £26 million loss.

Chelsea, Britain’s fifth-biggest building society, which had almost 30 per cent of its book in buy-to-let loans in December, said that the fraud related to lending at the height of the property boom between 2006 and 2008.

Stuart Bernau, Chelsea’s new chairman and interim chief executive, who joined last month from Nationwide, said that the suspicious activity centred on new blocks of flats in Manchester, Leeds, Birmingham and Liverpool.

Chelsea believes that some solicitors, valuers and investors together artificially inflated property values so that unnecessarily big mortgages could be obtained and the extra cash pocketed.

The mortgage scam

• The plan is hatched Most frauds are believed to have been carried out by organised gangs, some involving valuers, mortgage brokers and chartered accountants. The scheme involves taking out buy-to-let mortgages on multiple properties, the values of which are falsely inflated.

• The plan is initiated The gang approaches a developer of new-build flats and offers to buy ten or twenty properties at a substantial discount. If the properties sell for £200,000, the offer might be for £160,000 per flat. This is legal.

• The plan is completed If the fraudsters were to take out a mortgage at this stage, it would be based on the purchase price of £160,000, but instead they take out a short-term bridging loan based on the market value — £200,000 — and not the purchase price. They convert the bridging loan into a buy-to-let mortgage, regarded as a remortgage by the lender. This will be based on the value of the property not the purchase price. Remortgages do not have to involve a purchase.

• The plan succeeds Assuming that the gang can borrow 85 per cent of the property’s value, they receive a mortgage for £170,000 to buy a £160,000 flat, enabling them to pocket the £10,000 difference. Some will sell the properties quickly, while others hold on to them and hope that the fraud goes unnoticed. By purchasing multiple properties, they can walk away with hundreds of thousands of pounds. (David Budworth)