The latest round of housing data is now complete. The Halifax, Nationwide and Hometrack have all released their April surveys; the Bank of England’s latest data on mortgage approvals was out a couple of weeks ago; and this morning it was the turn of RICS. By far the most interesting of the findings of late has been the change in the dynamic between demand and supply, with the RICS index tracking new instructions soaring, but the index tracking enquiries declining, suggesting house price falls later in the year. But did this trend continue into April?

All in all April was a good month for those hoping to see rises in house prices.

According to the Nationwide, average prices rose 1 per cent, with the annual rate moving up to 10 per cent. Martin Gahbauer, Nationwide’s Chief Economist, said: “The strong rebound in house prices over the last year has taken place within the context of a subdued mortgage market, with the number of mortgage advances across the industry still well down on pre crisis ‘norms’… the more important driver of rising house prices has been the low level of stock for sale, as many homeowners and buy-to-let landlords continue to wait for prices to recover to peak 2007 levels before deciding to sell up or move.”

According to Hometrack, prices were up 0.3 per cent, and said: “The housing market recovery of the last 12 months has been built on a scarcity of housing for sale. During the whole of 2009 the stock of housing for sale increased by just 7% – this in contrast to the first 2 months of 2010 when the supply of homes for sale increased by 10.2%. Over March the growth in the number of homes coming to the market exceeded new buyers registering with agents.”

As for the Halifax, it reported a modest 0.1 per cent drop, but a rise in the annual rate to 6.6 per cent. It said: “The improvement in house prices since spring 2009 has encouraged more people to try to sell their property. New sales instructions have risen, helping to push up the stock of unsold properties in recent months. As a result, the imbalance between supply and demand is easing somewhat. Our view is that house prices will be flat during 2010 as a whole.”

The Bank of England’s latest mortgage data, this time for March, reported that mortgage approvals for house purchases were up 4.3 per cent, after falling in the three previous months.  However, approvals remain very low, and around 90 per cent down on the 2007 peak.

And that brings us to the Royal Institution of Chartered Surveyors. As you know, this column is a fan of this monthly survey. Its headline index, produced by asking surveyors if prices were up or down in their region, and taking the percentage number who said down, from the percentage number who said up, has shown itself to be an excellent barometer of the market. But also within the RICS survey is data on the number of new enquiries, which is an indicator of changing demand, and is a force pushing up on prices; and the number of new instructions, an indicator of supply, pulling down on prices.

The headline RICS index saw a big jump in April, up from 9, which was a seven-month low, to 17. Actually, 17 is not an especially high score, and is indicative of modest growth in prices, but it’s the jump that is the most significant aspect of this.

But supposing we look beneath the surface, and see what is going on with the forces that influence demand and supply. For some time now there have been signs that forces have been upping supply and pulling down on demand, with the RICS index tracking enquiries falling into steady decline since last year’s summer. Meanwhile, the index following new instructions has been rising, from minus 21 last May, to plus 21 last month.

It seems, however, that in April the trend stopped. The enquiries index rose sharply from zero to plus 8, while the index for new instructions fell from 21 to 11.

Now, one month’s worth of data does not indicate a trend. As ever with these things we will have to wait another month to see if this was a one-off blip or a change in direction.

What is clear is that things are not clear. There is evidence pointing to both falls and rises.

Recently, the Centre for Economics and Business Research suggested we are set to see strong rises in house prices over the next couple of years.

We suspect that what we are really seeing is evidence of how few people understand the seriousness of the economic dangers we face. Maybe there is one thing the three main political parties did manage to achieve in the election mania, and that was to successfully fool the electorate into a false sense of confidence. Let’s hope we are wrong, and the political parties were not misleading us at all, but that rather they were smack on.

Of course, central banks want to drive up asset prices. They are hoping that quantitative easing (QE) will lead to a rise in consumer borrowing pushing up demand. But they have also said that if this does not work, then they are hoping that QE will lead to higher asset prices, which will then lead to higher demand. But this seems to be a dangerous strategy, and could even backfire into central banks blowing up bubbles. To an extent, it does feel that we are in danger of seeing the same errors which led to the credit crunch in the first place. Globally we would agree that the underlying problem is lack of demand, but for the UK, US and certain other economies, the problem is still quite different. QE may be the right policy, but is being administered by the wrong banks.