Reports in the news today advise that house prices edged 0.1% higher during March, helping improve the quarterly rate of decline in Britain's faltering property market.

The slight improvement last month came after prices dropped 0.9% in February and eased the quarterly fall to 0.6% between January and March, Halifax have said.

The average UK house price stood at £162,912 in March, but this was 2.9% lower than a year earlier as values continued to fall by at their fastest annual pace since October 2009.

The three-month measure, which is generally seen as a smoother indicator of trends, suggested the market was showing some signs of stabilisation, according to experts. The quarter-on-quarter fall in the first three months of this year was lower than in the third and fourth quarters of 2010, when prices fell 1% and 1.1% respectively.

Halifax said improvements in the UK jobs market was likely to have offered support. Recent official figures showed the number in employment rose by 32,000 in the three months to January as more people secured full-time jobs.