Housing market recovery 'should continue next year' But, the organisation predicts that those levels will fall back a little in 2014 as the boost from the Government's cheap loans scheme, the Funding for Lending programme, fades. Activity was, however, stronger than expected and the CML predicts that at the end of this year, there will have been 930,000 transactions, £144bn of gross lending and £9bn of net lending. Gross lending in November was around £12.9bn, the CML said. Bob Pannell, CML chief economist, said: "Whereas the FLS was conceived by the UK authorities to mitigate the worst impacts of a potential fresh credit crunch, its launch has in fact coincided with a more positive external funding environment, in part due to European Central Bank actions. Given this more benign context, in our view the FLS now has the potential to underpin a modest pick-up in mortgage lending activity... A key test, however, will be the extent to which greater borrower appetite materialises in response to better credit availability. Figures earlier this week showed that it was easier to secure a mortgage than at any time in the past four years.