Nationwide have issued their figures on UK house prices for August, and it contains yet more positive news.

The average house price was 1.6% higher in August than it was in July. This the 4th consecutive monthly increase in UK house prices.

Growth on the less volatile and reputedly more accurate tri-monthly measure accelerated from a growth of 2.7% in the three months ending June, to 3.3% in the three months ending August. And annually the rate of decline has slowed from 6.2% to 2.7%.

Martin Gahbauer, Nationwide's chief economist has put the upward pressure down to the low interest rates, but as I have already commented on Write About Property, I am taking that with a pinch of salt, because, lest we not forget Nationwide has every reason to create positive sentiment on the housing market.

I'll tell you what I told them:

"The reality is that transaction levels are still sucky, no one with a hefty deposit can get an affordable mortgage, and that is out of the people who have sufficient job security to even want a mortgage in the current climate. The only prop underneath prices is the fact that supply is low and this has meant that buyers have temporarily lost the buyers-market power they had in 2008, if that changes prices will fall again."

So there you have it. The advice you can take from that is: get in quick and sell in a sellers' market, before too many people catch on.

In my last article I wrote about the inextricable link between house prices and house affordability vis-a-vis first time buyers. That article attempted to use the dynamics house price correction to forecast the future of this one. The dynamics were tracked using 2 sources: the house price to (first time buyers) earnings ratio index by Nationwide, and an article based on the nationwide index comparing average mortgage repayments to the average first time buyers' take home pay.

The external article forecast a further 15% drop, and my findings led me to warn of the possibility it could be even more than that.

However, today the Centre for Economics and Business Research said another 8% would bottom the market, and there were reports that affordability has trebled since the peak according to the Halifax. Halifax said mortgage payments now take just 31% of first time buyers disposable income compared to 48% at the peak. This is massively different to the Nationwide affordability scales.

Liam Bailey, of Write About Property -- who I would now call a new friend of mine having been in contact since referencing his article -- said the different might be because the Halifax figure is based mostly on couples, as first time buyers usually come in pairs. He is still waiting for Halifax to return his call, which will be tomorrow now.

I was surprised Liam didn't highlight the possibility that the difference could be because of the different areas the companies operate in, and the fact that the Halifax is an estate agent as well as a mortgage lender.

Halifax operates mainly in and around Yorkshire and Northern England, where houses are always more affordable than the rest of the country. For instance at the peak of the boom, average mortgage repayments stayed below 100% of average first time buyers take home pay, whereas the UK average was 136.2% at the time (according to Nationwide's historical index).

If in fact the Halifax's operation as an estate agent as well as a lender is in any way responsible for the massive difference between its affordability index and that of Nationwide, then indirectly Liam is correct; because estate agents deal with the couple buying, and not just perhaps the one who is borrowing