The relief among those connected with the house building and selling industries must be enormous at the moment.

Following on from a set of more encouraging sales data and a fall in pessimism among estate agents, we had figures from Nationwide at the end of last week saying that house prices jumped 1.6% in the month of May.

And this morning we have the release of the Hometrack figures showing no fall in house prices in May.

Although the mood of optimism may have been dampened a tad with the release of the April Land Registry figures showing house prices still falling.

But these are figures for a month ago. And with supply tight and demand seemingly on the rise, it is very tempting to conclude that house prices are set for a bit of a revival.

That would be premature.

I’m with Richard Donnell, Hometrack’s Director of Research, on this.

His view is: “While house prices remain unchanged over May the outlook for the housing market remains fragile with a number of factors that could well de-rail the recent pick up in market activity. Given the weak outlook for the economy, house prices are expected to remain under downward pressure for the foreseeable future.”

And he again repeated his concerns that: “Overall levels of market activity are well down on what would constitute normal market conditions. The willing purchasers that are returning to the market are largely confined to the more wealthy areas of the country and limited to those buying with cash or who require low LTV (loan to value) mortgages.

“A broad based recovery in the housing market requires a broad base of buyers and the majority of would-be first time buyers remain excluded from the market.”

Also we have to be a bit careful when picking on one month’s data. Firstly there are seasonal factors – May is generally a strongish month for sales. But also when the market is so unbalanced and sales volumes are low, as Richard suggests, indices become less reliable.

But beyond all this there are two connected issues that are well worth keeping an eye on. The first is the possible re-emergence of an inflation rate that would put upward pressure on the official Bank rates.

I may have reservations about some of the points made by Liam Halligan in his regular Sunday Telegraph slot, but I do support his view that the likelihood of inflation is being played down rather more than is wise.

He has been banging on about this for some time and in his latest piece he connects with the second issue worth taking seriously – the direction of Bond yields, which has much to do with where mortgage rates end up.

I may not share his certainty over these matters, but he is not alone in looking at this out-of-most-people’s-minds area of finance and wondering how impactful it may be to the general economy or, indeed, to the housing market.

The FT carried the headline last week of “Homebuyers face higher mortgage rates” on the back of rising Government bond yields and Stephanie Flanders of the BBC also blogged, last week, on bond yields and rising interest rates.

Certainly, it is true, that as we look in the rear view mirror we can see, through the data so far published, that things look a bit brighter.

But it is what is ahead of us that really matters. So as we look through the windscreen can we really see a break in the weather ahead or are there more nasty hazards lurking in the mist on the road ahead?