UK House Prices: They Never Stopped Falling in March

I have read a lot of reports this morning headlining a variation of "House Price Resume Fall", and "House Prices in Fresh Fall". I don't get it. Anyone who knows anything about the UK housing market, or more specifically the current house price crash, knows that the monthly rise reported by Nationwide in March did not mean that house prices had stopped falling. In fact I am bereft to believe that anyone actually believed it did.

When Nationwide reported a price rise last month, anyone with real knowledge of the UK housing market and the price crash, asked themselves what the price rise might be based on; on what foundation did it stand.

The answer, they quickly found out was, not a great deal:

1. The mortgage market was still in disarray, with whopping great deposits still being necessary to get a favourable deal, and that is for the few who can even get a mortgage
2. The economy had not seen a miraculuous recovery, unemployment was still rising and many more people continued to fear the safety of their jobs. There was not a great deal of demand for mortgages or to buy houses in that kind of economic climate.
3. Therefore transactions were still at an incredibly low level, and in fact this is the reason for the rise, the lower the transaction volume, the higher the likelihood of the monthly index going array and showing a rise when overall prices are still falling.

The Halifax index showing a 1.9% fall for March a couple of days later should have quelled any optimism about the monthly rise reported by Nationwide, but as today's reports show it didn't. It took another month, and more reported monthly falls in the same index to snap them out of it.