A leading European lender has castigated the UK property sector's belief that "it has a divine right to have cheap debt at its fingertips".

Speaking at a breakfast launch of PwC's and the Urban Land Institute's Emerging Trends in Real Estate Europe report, Starwood Capital Group's head of European debt, Peter Denton, said: "Getting debt is supposed to be difficult, but people don't want to hear it."

He also said that the Bank of England was "taking soundings about the stability" of the banking industry as it has "this ability to rush at electric fences every few years".

In addition, Denton warned that the end, next year, of the government programme for lending to boost finance from UK banks signaled problems for the property sector's massive funding gap.

But the debt problem is being solved despite some banks having a "head-in-the-sand mentality".

"A lot of others, however, are quietly getting the receivers in [to deal with problem debtors] but we don't see the headlines about these as they are in the £20m bracket," said Denton.

Denton added that big-ticket sales of large problem loan portfolios were over.

"Instead, they will be finding individual solutions to individual loans - which is usually the best way," he said.