House prices in Britain fell 1.9% in March compared to February, the country's biggest mortgage lender today, dampening the optimism over a separate report earlier this week which said property values had edged higher.

The report from Halifax came only a day after another major mortgage lender, Nationwide, said average prices rose 0.9% in March.

Although reporting a price drop of 17.5% from year-ago levels and predicting that 2009 will be a tough year in the housing market, Halifax nonetheless detected some hopeful signs.

"The latest industrywide figures show that the number of mortgages approved to finance house purchase in February - a leading indicator of completed house sales - were the highest since May 2008," said Halifax economist Martin Ellis.

"The house price to earnings ratio - a key measure of housing affordability - is at its lowest level since early 2003 at 4.34. The recent cuts in interest rates have also reduced the amount that the average existing mortgage borrower is devoting to mortgage repayments from a peak of 26.9% of household income in October 2008 to 22.6% in February 2009."

Completed sales of homes in England and Wales are currently running at half the previous year's level.

Nationwide's chief economist, Fionnuala Earley, had cautioned that her bank's report of a rise in March was "far too soon to see this as evidence that the trough of the market has been reached."

Earley said it would take some time for the Bank of England's rate cuts and its new policy of boosting the quantity of money in the economy to work through to the housing market, and before a sustained recovery in house prices can begin.

The Bank of England's quarterly credit conditions report, released yesterday, said a majority of lenders expect credit availability to improve in the second quarter but also believe demand for home mortgages will continue to decline in the near term.

Estate agents Knight Frank, meanwhile, reported that the value of land for housing development fell by 15% in the fourth quarter, and 50% in a year.

Knight Frank said the steepest fall was 64% year-on-year in the Yorkshire-Humber region of northern England.