The last month has seen the first real encouraging data on the housing market for quite some time, says a report from the centre for economics and business research (cebr).

Both the Halifax and Nationwide price indices have recently seen their first monthly rises since the end of 2007, and mortgage approvals rose to 37,000 in February.

According to the cebr, if mortgage approvals rise to between 60-70,000 per month, this could be enough to offset the impact of “meagre wage settlements and rapidly rising unemployment that will continue to unfold over the course of the year”.

This, they say, could lead to house prices bottoming out by the third quarter of the year.

However, the cebr also say that a more likely scenario is that mortgage approvals will only reach around 50,000 per month by late summer.

Even in these circumstances, though, the cebr’s forecasting models suggest that prices will only fall by a further eight to ten per cent, and are likely to bottom out by the start of 2010.