Nearly a year after the recession ended, the UK real estate market has yet to recover. While homes and flats in major cities like London are always a hot commodity, in nearly every other region homeowners are pessimistic about the market. For more news click here.

Over the last year, the average seller has gone from cautiously optimistic to downright dour. In a recent survey from the research group Zoopla, one out of every four homeowners expects the market to fall further in the coming year.

There are several reasons for this. Chief among them is mortgage financing. The battered banks have cut back on lending, and most sellers know that fewer loans means fewer sales. Since most buyers need a loan to purchase a home, any retrenchment is a negative.

In the same survey from Zoopla, an incredible 89 percent of potential buyers said that it is no easier to get a mortgage loan than it was three month ago. In short, if the banks don't increase lending the market cannot and will not improve.

In the UK, the Scots are the most optimistic as over two-thirds of homeowners believe that housing prices will increase in the coming year. The English and the Welsh are less optimistic with only sixty percent predicting a rise in prices.