No one said it was going to be a straight road to recovery. A trampoline recovery for the UK property market has never looked especially likely, and it looks even less so following the budget and the uncovering of the huge fiscal mountain the UK has to climb.

In fact, we made our view on this clear at the beginning of the month after an especially big leap in mortgage lending was revealed by the Bank of England and all the talk was of 'green shoots' and other clichés.

We pointed out then: "Now, a jump in lending like February's 19% just isn't going to happen each month over several months. But, if we assume a steady but more modest monthly rise - which again is somewhat unlikely - then the earliest we can imagine prices stabilising will be around the autumn.

"But autumn is, traditionally, a dead season for property, so we're probably looking at early 2010 as the most likely bottom of the market - and perhaps (just perhaps), some very, very modest growth."

And the latest mortgage lending data shows this to be the case.

Mortgage lending, or approvals to lend, actually fell last month - the first fall in total approvals since November last year, announced the British Bankers' Association reported.

This in no way suggests the market will start plunging downwards again. In fact, as we said above, this is precisely the pattern we would expect as we gradually approach a bottom and the market becomes positioned for very slow a U-shaped recovery.

Mortgage approvals in March were down seven per cent to 26,097 from 28,024 in the previous month, after rising from a record low of 17,895 in November, the BBA said.

Approvals are 25 per cent lower than 12 months ago and 67 per cent lower than the borrowing peak in November 2006.

While the dip in mortgage approvals is to be expected, other signs provide evidence that confidence at least is returning. Headlines in the press about the property market, for example, are increasingly positive, even if tentatively so.

Estate agents are reporting growing the number of inquiries from potential buyers to be up and some indices, such as the Hometrack index have shown that asking prices at least are falling less quickly.

Commenting on the mortgage data, Simon Rubinsohn, an economist with the Royal Institute of Chartered Surveyors, told the FT, "Although this is, on the face of it, a disappointing piece of data, RICS is not inclined to believe that the pick-up in activity in the housing market from historically low levels is already running out of steam."

BBA statistics director, David Dooks, said, "Lending to households continues to grow, as banks make funds available for people who meet their lending criteria but consumer confidence is fragile and unlikely to change demand markedly in the near-term. The banks' figures also show it would be unrealistic to expect the mortgage market to recover in a steady and consistent way in the current economic environment."

Source: BBA

The annual growth rate for net mortgage lending continued to decline. Gross mortgage lending, at £8.9bn, was at its lowest since April 2001. March's approval activity, both in volume and value, was marginally lower than in February and remains at a historically subdued level.

This slide in lending really underlines the fact that:

• The recovery will be gradual and definitely uneven
• Despite green shoot talk, this is still very much a buyers' market, at least for now