This is hardly the time of year to talk about thaws, but are there signs of one in the housing market? Economists have been poring over the latest survey from the Royal Institution of Chartered Surveyors (Rics), which showed the first increase in new buyer inquiries since October 2006. Normally, as Simon Rubinsohn, chief economist at Rics, points out, such a rise is a prelude to a strengthening in housing demand.

Allan Monks, an economist with JP Morgan, described the figures as “a glimmer of hope”. “Though there have been few positives to take from the housing-market data for some time,” he wrote, “the Rics survey in November gave some hope that house-purchase activity has finally troughed and that the most intense phase of the downward price spiral is behind us”, he wrote. Karen Ward, of HSBC, in a research note ominously called Catch a Falling Knife (ominous because HSBC is trumpeting its plan to boost mortgage lending significantly), described the findings as “tentative green shoots”.

The present situation, of course, is far from normal. It is one thing for buyers to be venturing back into estate agents’ offices, quite another for them actually to get a mortgage and overcome worries about unemployment and further house-price falls.

Everybody accepts this. Rubinsohn cautions against early stabilisation of prices or a big upturn in demand, though he thinks we may have reached the point where activity can’t fall much further. Ward says first-time buyers need to return in far greater numbers – now they have to find larger deposits, we are some way away from that.

Monks sees mortgage approvals rising by 2,000 to 3,000 a month, resulting in a gradual improvement in the outlook for prices. So, he believes, monthly price falls will drop to about 1% on the Halifax and Nationwide measures, getting gradually smaller until, by the end of next year, prices will be flat. A 16% Halifax/Nationwide fall this year would be followed by one of 9% next.

That may be a lot to hang on one indicator, but it is a reasonable way to look at it. People tend to think in straight lines. Some (not me) thought that when prices were rising, they could only carry on doing so. Now some think they can only ever fall. It does not work like that. The world is not made of straight lines.

home.economics@sunday-times.co.uk

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