According to Nationwide Building Society, house prices rose +0.9% in March after a -1.9% drop in February, which could encourage people to think the housing crisis is coming to an end.

Nationwide cautioned against people jumping to conclusions about a housing rebound although investors seized the news as a sign that the Bank of England’s aggressive interest rate cuts may be helping conditions to perk up.

However, according to Halifax, house prices actually fell by -1.9% in March, taking the three-month annual rate of decline to -17.5%. This was up from a fall of -17.7% in the three months to February and this is the first improvement in the Halifax index since August 2007.

Analysts caution against reading too much into these surveys as the different results show how volatile they are.