Is housing showing some green shoots?

It would be nice to think that the housing market is finally out of the woods. Yesterday's figures on mortgage approvals suggest that if it isn't there yet then it can just about see a clearing.
For several months now there's been a run of data that suggested house buyers were gagging to make offers and move.
The numbers of mortgage approvals stopped falling and the numbers of people going into estate agents and asking for particulars started rising.
But the level of actual home sales stayed stubbornly low.
How come? Winter months are traditionally quieter than spring, but relentlessly bad economic news, a dearth of mortgage funding and rising job worries meant the silence was deafening this time round.
As we approach spring – the point at which the market traditionally picks up – there is at last some evidence that suggests the worst may be over.
That's because we have figures which suggest that mortgage approvals have not only stopped falling but have actually started rising again.
Let's sound a health warning here. The market has been at rock-bottom for months, so it really wasn't going to be difficult to get the numbers up again. We are also entering that spring pick-up.
So while some may say this marks the start of a recovery, others will caution that it is no more than a normal seasonal rise.
My hunch is that it's more than that. While you can't see it in the figures, the anecdotal evidence from estate agents is that there are significant numbers of people who need to move and have been waiting for the right moment.
Property is cheap. Interest rates are at rock-bottom. Provided you are reasonably confident about your job the simple logic is to buy now.
This doesn't mean house prices are about to start rocketing up - there's no chance of that in a fragile economy.
They may even continue falling for a while yet as the impact of job losses works its way through the economy.
Neither does it mean there will be a big leap in sales. There are neither enough houses on the market nor enough mortgages to fund them for that to happen.
More fundamentally, many would-be first-time buyers are still struggling to rustle up a deposit at a time when risk-averse lenders are reluctant to agree the fat mortgages of old to people starting out on the housing ladder.
But if it's not the end, could it at least be the beginning of the end?