“We are always looking at what more we can do to restore stability to the housing market,” Housing Minister Margaret Beckett will say today, according to a text of the remarks released by her office.

Rising unemployment, rationing of loans by banks and the deepening credit crisis have intensified a slump in the property market. House prices across the U.K. fell 11.5 percent in January, reaching an average of 195,724 pounds ($274,620), the Department for Communities and Local Government said yesterday.

Beckett will today meet one of the first people to benefit from Prime Minister Gordon Brown’s plan to help first-time buyers.

Under the “Home Buy Direct” program, developed in 2007 when U.K. property prices were still soaring, buyers can purchase a home for as little as 70 percent of the market price with the help of an equity loan funded by the government and participating developers. The loan is provided without a fee for the first five years and can be used as a deposit.

“We know buyers are finding it difficult to enter the market at the moment, and Home Buy Direct is part of a range of actions we have taken to support people aspiring to buy a place of their own, and to help house builders facing tougher times,” Beckett will say.

Beckett will meet the buyer, Sally Taylor, a 25 year-old policewoman who is acquiring a home at a Barratt Developments Plc site in Cheltenham, England.

SOURCE: Bloomberg