Finally, good news about house prices!

Both house prices and house sales are up, according to new figures. Is this the long-awaited sign of recovery, or just a temporary bounce?

Evidently, good news in the housing market resembles the old joke about London buses - after absolutely nothing for the best part of two years, we have seen a flurry of positive announcements in the last few days.

Housing market on the up

First, online estate agent Rightmove revealed that according to its figures the average asking price jumped 2.4% in May, with the average house price on its site now standing at £227,441.

And while this still represents a fall of 6.2% from a year ago, the rise is the highest such jump in May since 2003.

Hot on the heels of Rightmove's research were the latest figures from everyone's favourite trade body, the National Association of Estate Agents. This time, the figures were from April rather than May, but the good news is that estate agents managed to shift more houses across the month - ten - than at any point since October 2007.

Turning a housing price corner?

Now, we all like a bit of good news, and there is no denying that over the past month or so there have been a fair few such pieces of optimism. The Royal Institution of Chartered Surveyors highlighted housing sales are creeping up last week, while Lloyds Banking Group has suggested there may even be a full period of housing price growth at the end of this year.

Mortgage rates are also falling, albeit for those with healthy sized deposits, while there is also some hope at last for first-time buyers.

Many housing bulls believe journalists are in the business of talking down the market at the moment. That's not the case here. Personally, I hope that this is indeed the bottom of the market, that prices are starting to recover and we can start being positive about the housing sector again.

But it will take a sustained period of such figures to convince me that things are really on the up again, and that this is not the bounce of a dead cat, as I argued in This is NOT the bottom of the housing crash last week.

Because for all their positives, the findings of both Rightmove and the estate agents' association contain a few areas to be cautious about, too.

Here comes the bad news

According to the Rightmove report, May saw the lowest number of properties coming to the market in six years - just 61,000, compared to 135,000 in May last year.

It attributes this fact to the previous house price falls trapping a number of potential buyer segments: those that habitually remortgaged during the boom, the recent buyers with little or no deposit who are now in negative equity, and the equity 'losers' who have up to 25% equity but need more in order to trade up.

With stock so low, it is not surprising that prices are pushed upwards. The true test will be when those who are waiting for the market to hit the bottom decide enough is enough, and put their property on the market.

If there is then a flood of new property on sale in the market, a rudimentary knowledge of economics would suggest that prices are likely to dip again. Rightmove itself admitted there is a risk that the supply side of the housing market is 'compromised' for years to come.

As for the estate agents' figures, the association found number of house hunters registering with estate agents actually fell in April, albeit marginally, from 268 to 265. What's more, the association acknowledged prices had again fallen across the month.

So many indices, so little time

There is also a danger of reading too much into those perceived green shoots of recovery. In April, Rightmove reported an increase in house prices, this time of 1.8%. In contrast, Halifax's house price index for April found a fall in house prices of 1.7%, while Nationwide's index also saw a fall in house prices, by 0.4%.

So while the Rightmove and estate agents' indices are useful in terms of providing an indication of the sentiment within the housing market, I am not convinced we should attach too much weight to them.

Don't count your chickens!

Still, there's no way to deny that the news from Rightmove and the National Association of Estate Agents is positive, and should give a spark of hope to homeowners in negative equity. And I think it is safe to say that - despite the ongoing troubles in the financial markets - the housing sector is showing signs that reports of its death have been a tad premature. But it will take more, a lot more, before we can say with any certainty that things have turned the corner.

I'm all for celebrating the positives, but let's not be naive enough to think there are no further hiccups still to come.

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