Expectations of impending interest rate increases led to larger numbers of homeowners remortgaging their houses in March. There were 33,900 remortgage loans advanced during the month which is up 16% compared with the previous month according to the Council of Mortgage Lenders (CML).

The figure is 17% higher than the same month a year ago. Home loans for house purchases also proved to be more popular, although the lenders’ body said the market remained “subdued”.

The number of these loans was up 24% compared with the previous month. However, it was 17% down on March 2010, and the CML warned against reading too much into one month’s figures.

There was a significant increase in both house purchase and remortgage lending in March but, over the first quarter of the year as a whole, the picture was subdued and that is unlikely to change for the foreseeable future.

The string of bank holidays will probably have affected mortgage market activity since March.

Remortgaging accounted for 37% of all lending during the first three months, up from 30% during the previous quarter. The CML said it was likely that this was linked to expectations of an interest rate rise in the coming months, making mortgages more expensive, even if this increase was only small.

The number of home loans made in March to first-time buyers was 28% higher than in February, but 17% lower than a year earlier.

Typically, buyers now have to provide a 21% deposit to get on the property ladder for the first time. This is a little less difficult than the 24% typical deposit required a year ago, the CML figures show.

Only 4% of first-time buyers now choose an interest-only mortgage compared with 30% before the financial crisis, when these loans were much more available from lenders.

This has meant buyers have been forced to save up before buying a home which, in turn, has pushed up the cost of renting. The rental sector is groaning under the strain of the influx of frustrated buyers.

House prices in England and Wales are still falling, according to the latest survey from the Land Registry. It says the average property price fell by 1.1% in March to £160,996, leaving prices 2.3% lower than a year ago.

The data paints a different picture from that of the Nationwide, which earlier said prices had been “fairly static” over the past six months.

The Land Registry figures cover all completed sales in England and Wales. They show that prices have been falling consistently since last August, with only one month since then - January - recording a price increase.

The data for March shows a monthly house price change of minus 1.1%, which is the largest monthly fall seen since February 2009. Over the past year, only London had seen prices rise, up by just 0.8% in that time.

By contrast, prices have fallen by more than 9% in the North East of England, while in Wales they have dropped by just over 7%.

The Nationwide’s survey covers a sample of its own customers and suggests that in April house prices across the UK fell by just 0.2%, leaving them down 1.3% over the year.

However the Nationwide also said prices had fallen in three of the last six months and risen in the other three. Overall, this had left prices 0.6% higher in the three months to April compared with the previous quarter.

The Nationwide’s chief economist argued that the up and down pattern of monthly changes reflected a market with little real momentum. A strong rebound in the market remains unlikely as the recovery is still expected to remain modest by historic standards.

Analysts now have range of view as to what is in store for the UK housing market in the rest of 2011. In Nationwide’s view, the most likely outcome is that house prices will continue to move sideways or drift modestly lower through 2011.

However, separate figures from the Bank of England point to a possible modest increase in sales in the coming months. The number of new mortgages approved for home buyers, but not yet lent, rose in March by nearly a thousand.

At 47,557 the number of approvals that month was higher than the average for the previous six months.

HM Revenue and Customs reported recently that there had been a jump of 10,000 in the number of homes sold in March. The number of completed sales rose from 55,000 in February to 66,000.

However, sales in the first three months of the year, at 174,000, were still lower than during the same period last year, and were the second lowest figures on record for a first quarter. Analysts have struck a note of caution, despite mortgage lending picking up at building societies and other mutual lenders in March.