When will the housing market recover ?

It depends what you mean by recover.Many would take that to mean strongly rising house prices, which may be a little way off still.
However there are strong indications that first time buyers and buy to let sales are growing.
First-time buyers increased their share in the mortgage market in October, compared with the previous month.
In October first-time buyer activity rose to 15.3 per cent as a proportion of total purchases last month, compared with just 10.4 per cent in September.
Research released by the Council of Mortgage Lenders earlier this month demonstrated that first-time buyers were rushing to take advantage of the stamp duty holiday.
Almost one-third (32 per cent) of all loans issued to first-time buyers in September were for properties valued at between £125,000 and £175,000.
The number of buy-to-let mortgage packages available on the market is slowly rising as well.
Statistics released last week by the Council of Mortgage Lenders revealed that the buy-to-let market had grown for the first time in two years during the third quarter of 2009.
For any market to recover it needs a firm starting point and the above activity shows, that the property market is heading in the right direction.