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The rate of recovery in the housing market is likely to be slow, one organisation has predicted.

Gross mortgage lending over the course of the next 12 months will stand between £150 billion and £160 billion, the Association of Mortgage Intermediaries (AMI) has forecasted.

Furthermore, it believes that 620,000 housing transactions will be completed throughout the course of the year.

"The rush of completions towards the end of last year, due to the stamp duty holiday, distorted figures for transactions," said the AMI's director Robert Sinclair.

"With the average UK home comfortably below the £175,000 stamp duty threshold, buyers would have pushed hard to avoid an additional levy of £1,750 on completions after December."

In light of this, there is likely to be a fall in the number of completions during the first quarter of this year, he indicated, which means intervention is needed to ensure the market stays buoyant.

Mr Sinclair advised: "Rather than tinkering with stamp duty levels, what we need to see is a root and branch reform of this inequitable 'slab' tax on property."

Throughout the course of 2009, remortgaging activity was restrained, the AMI found, although this situation may change if interest rates are increased.

The body predicts that if this were to occur, more people would switch to fixed-rate deals, which in turn may cause lenders to move away from new lending.

As a result of this, the government needs to do more to encourage lenders to start providing funding again, the organisation added.

Average UK House prices will grow by over six per cent during 2010 and will be around 20 per cent higher than current levels by the end of 2013, research from the Centre for Economic and Business Research show.