More good property news. Or is it?

More figures showing that the property market is improving. This time from the Halifax. But they have been followed by the customary gloomy forecasts of several economists who argue that the market is still too fragile to start making optimistic forecasts.

Over the past few weeks it’s become almost a game. A group of supposed experts will produce cheery figures and another group will shoot them down. So what’s going on? The truth is that nobody really knows. The property market has taken a Hellish beating and is still in a state of volatility and uncertainty.

A number of factors stand out. It is indisputable that there is a far greater interest being shown in buying property than has been the case for many months. House price falls have begun to level off. Sales are up – but only fractionally. Lenders are still nervous and their continuing intransigence is acting as a brake on the market.

The latest goodish figures come from the Halifax. They show that the rate at which house prices fell tailed off marginally in April. The average price for a property in the UK dropped to 1.7 per cent compared with 1.9 per cent for March.

These encouraging signs of stabilisation are due to the government printing money – quantitative easing – and filtering it into the market in the hope that the banks and other lenders will begin to lend it back into the property sector. It is also to do with the very sharp blade with which the Bank of England has hacked into interest rates, producing far cheaper mortgages for millions of people as a direct consequence.

But, and this is where it gets murky, any improvements are to do with a sense of confidence on the part of the consumer. And this is extremely difficult to gauge.

Nationwide sponsors a consumer confidence index. It showed that 19 per cent of people in March thought things were getting better. But their latest survey shows a jump to 26 per cent in April. That’s very good news.

But such surveys must not be judged as the Tablets from the Mount. Indeed, cynics and pessimists would argue that they add up to little more than a bag of piffle. But if they are to be believed – and after all, when it comes to it, there’s not much else to go on – each contributes, in its own small way, to an overall feel-good factor.

Services and retailing – the latter led by the John Lewis group who have announced expansion plans – have just turned in some good figures. When those reports are added to the tiny green shoots in the property sector even the most pessimistic of the seers might dare to think that perhaps the worst of the recession is over or is drawing to a close.