UK house prices fell again in April compared to March, according to the Halifax House Price index. The fall has more significant than the Nationwide house price index, which only recorded a -0.2% decline for the month.

Both surveys measure house prices by looking at housing values submitted for new mortgage approvals. The Halifax index also recorded a -1.4% drop in March compared to February.

Halifax house prices now stand -3.7% below their 2010 level, the biggest year-on-year drop since the -4.7% fall in October 2009.

The latest reading brings the nation’s current average house price to less than 80% of the August 2007 peak, the Halifax said.

But Martin Ellis, Halifax’s chief economist, said there had been recent signs of tightening in the nation’s housing market. Among other things, a survey by the Royal Institution for Chartered Surveyors in March pointed to an increasing number of sales relative to the stock of unsold properties on surveyors’ books, the second month in a row to indicate an increase, which is often a sign that house prices will rise.

Ellis also highlighted a higher number of mortgage approvals in the first three months of the year, itself a rise from loan approvals in the last quarter of 2010. Other factors likely to underpin the housing market are an increase in the number of full-time workers and the current ultra-low level of interest rates, which makes servicing debts more manageable.