The Royal Institute of Chartered Surveyors has said that UK house prices will not fall by 10% this year, as they had earlier forecast, but we now look set for house prices to end this year slightly higher than last year.

RICS have also said that mortgage approvals, which have been rising for several months will level off at about 55,000 per month -- still historically low and not enough to bring substantial or prolonged upward pressure on prices.

What is putting upward pressure on prices in the current climate, RICS say is the fact that new instructions are at an all time low, having fallen for 26 consecutive months. RICS said that this, along with continually rising unemployment and economic contraction to make the current minor upturn very fragile indeed.

In fact the underlying sentiment of the RICS housing market sentiment was as the headline said: outlook improving but housing market not out of woods yet. In other words, yes it's great that prices are rising now but with the economic outlook still so negative there is likely to be a second dip.

Commenting, RICS senior economist Brigid O’Leary said:

"There has been a clear change in the housing market over the past few months and, as a result, it is unlikely that we will now see the kind of house price falls widely predicted at the start of the year. Instead, the return of buyer demand and the limited availability of housing on the market could be enough to support prices so it wouldn’t be surprising to actually see prices increase further from here in the short term. That would be consistent with more positive expectations that have been reported in recent RICS Housing Market Surveys.

"However, the outlook for 2010 is fairly uncertain and there is a real risk that prices may slip back again. Affordability is still stretched and mortgage finance, while improving, is fairly hard to come by. The positive news we have seen has been a recovery from record lows and there are still many uncertainties in the economy. In particular, we are concerned about the mortgage finance environment and the impact of further increases in unemployment on house prices."