I don’t think any of us got too excited over the slight rise in house prices last month, though it was nice to see things headed in that direction for a change. It is just as well that most of us greeted the news with caution because Nationwide figures released last week show a 0.4% decline.

The good news is these same figures show that the pace of the decline in house prices has slowed.

No matter which way you cut it, though, houses are still worth 15% less on average than they were a year ago and for most people this is fairly grim news.

It is a very interesting fact, however, that the largest factor affecting your house price movement is location. The Land Registry released figures in March that make fascinating reading with typical property prices rising by 1.8% in the North East of the country but falling by 2% over the same period in the West Midlands.

In separate news, Nationwide were reasonably positive about some of the measures put in place by Chancellor Alistair Darling in the last budget but they still sounded a note of caution.

They do not believe that anything he announced would have the effect of a quick turnaround in the market. It seems that they, like most of us, continue to urge patience.

There were some interesting statements made this week by the manager of Clarity Commercial, Chris Jenkins. And I must admit I agree with a lot of what he had to say.

The first thing he talked about was the way seasoned property landlords have a different take on things than the average person. He points to the number of these types of landlords who are continuing to expand their portfolio even as they are surrounded by doom and gloom news in the property sector.

Mr Jenkins claims this happens because experienced landlords are not panicked by the dire view of the immediate future. Most of these types of people are in this business for the long haul and realise that this time of low house prices is actually the ideal time to expand their property portfolio.

I agree with this view of things and assuming a landlord can get his hands on the necessary finance I think most experienced landlords recognise the soundness of this long term view.

The other point that Mr Jenkins made is that he believes that it is about time that the finance institutions of this country got their act together and made buy to let loans more readily available again. The lack of these loans is clearly, as I have discussed before, contributing to accidental landlords flooding this sector of the market.

Considering the fact that these financial institutions played a significant role in creating this mess in the first place it seems only fair that they help to drag us out of it. At the moment their policies seem to just be making things harder for buy to let landlords.

I have talked a lot about location being a prime factor in whether or not your local buy to let market is starting to show the very early signs of recovery. There is no doubt that this is important, but figures released this week by Findaproperty.com indicate that the type of property you own may be just as important.

According to their figures, the number of houses available to rent in the market fell in April for the second month in a row, in contrast the number of flats rose for the sixth consecutive month.

Clearly supply and demand dictates that these figures have an effect on rent rates and predictably, according to Findaproperty.com, rents for larger properties are up two months running while flats show a further 0.7% fall in average rents.

Andrew Smith, head of research at FindaProperty.com, said: “The UK has become a tale of two very different markets. House rentals are seeing the start of a recovery with declining supply rates and price rises for the largest family homes. In contrast, the flats market has seen a much deeper downturn, with rental prices falling for 13 consecutive months and supply levels continuing to increase.”

It would seem that the decrease in houses for rent is probably the result of people who had previously taken their houses off the sales list, returning to the market with more realistic expectations in terms of sales price, leading to an increase in sales of houses.

Flats on the other hand are traditionally the area favoured by first time buyers and buy to let landlords. These two groups of people are finding it very hard, in the current climate, to achieve mortgages so the flats remain on the rental market causing an oversupply.