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Professor Donald MacRae has declared a .

The chief economist at Lloyds TSB Scotland is a cautious Black Isler, so he's not saying if it's going to last.

That's probably wise. But at least the most recent Lloyds TSB Scotland price monitor, published this morning, provides some respite from tough times in the property market.

It's showing a rise of 0.7% in the quarter to the end of October. Over the past year, the bank's reckoning shows prices have fallen by 7.5%.

By its figures, there was a wobble in 2007, but the peak was reached in the second quarter of last year, and fell for four consecutive quarters since then.

This adds to evidence recently out from Halifax Bank of Scotland showing Scottish prices down 6.3% between the third quarter of 2008 and the three months to the end of September this year.

HBOS goes on to claim the drop from the UK market peak in the third quarter of 2007 is a 12% drop for Scotland, compared with a UK average of 18%.

It's worth noting there that Scotland has by far the least drop of any region from peak to trough.

Greater London was down 24% and Northern Ireland by 32%, though the most recent year sees HBOS's reckoning on Scotland picking up pace relative to others.

Price wobble

The crucial question is whether we've actually seen the trough, or if there's another one to come after the current steadying of prices.

Another survey for the UK, carried out for FindaProperty.com, last week raised fears that we could be seeing the wobble that could herald the second part of a double dip.

It measures asking prices. In the past, that has been a better indicator of the English conveyancing system than the Scottish one, though there's less difference through this recession.

It found the average Scottish asking prices this month stands 12.5% below last November, at 149,749, while the UK figure is down only 0.6%.

Waiting in limbo

Across Britain, it found a dip for the first time after seven months of rising prices, with £1,000 knocked off the asking price in only a month.

The survey separates out home owners making a move and first-time buyers, and finds the home-movers are worse affected, with a £3,000 dip.

It's worth noting that asking prices may register optimism more than realism, in that the HBOS survey is a long way out of kilter with the online company's survey evidence.

It's also worth noting the concerns I'm getting from the property sector, expressed privately of course: that they're still stuck in limbo and awaiting a further drop.

The feeling is that a combination of factors are holding off a further dip in prices; monetary and fiscal stimuli, the avoidance of repossession even where it's eventually inevitable, and the concern that rising unemployment is going to knock confidence into next year.

First-time buyers

Economic theory would suggest there are three elements that have yet to settle down until the market can come back into equilibrium; how much of a deposit is required, how much lenders are willing to offer as a multiple of household earnings, and how much people expect interest rates to be over the medium-term.

The part of the market that needs watching most closely is the first-time buyers, because they drive transactions further up the price chain, and because they typically start from a simple standpoint of deposit and mortgage, rather than another asset to offload.

So how do these elements stack up? The interest rates are low and showing signs of staying there for a while yet, but not indefinitely.

The lenders' earnings-property price ratio, at least for first-time buyers, fell sharply after the credit crunch crunched last year.

According to FindaProperty.com, it stood at 5.6 times income at the start of last year, and fell sharply from last December, to hit a plateau of around 4.8 times income from April.

The size of deposit is the element that has changed most.

It's not just the disappearance of those notorious 125% Northern Rock mortgages. All the lenders are looking to higher deposits, by proportion of price, than the pre-crunch days.

The average British first-time buyer's deposit at the end of last year was above £70,000, and the most recent figures suggest it's at £58,000.

Affordability gap

In Scotland, that November 09 figure was £28,590, so it's looking relatively very affordable north of the border. The average first-time buyer's deposit across Britain stands this month at 1.8 times income.

In Scotland, it's 1.1 times income, and in London it's 3.5 times.

Across Britain however, that still leaves an affordability gap.

By taking the average first-time buyer, with the average first-time buyer's home price, income and mortgage conditions, FindaProperty.com's number-crunchers have come up with their own "affordability gap".

At the end of last year, the price of becoming a first-time buyer was, on average 2.4 times income across Britain.

The drop to 1.8 times income, according to the November figures, is a big step in the right direction for those who want to get on the property ladder.

But that calculation suggests the market, Britain-wide, is less than half way downwards to an equilibrium price

Reaching that equilibrium price and stability in the market also depends on the behaviour of lenders.

They're under pressure to mend their ways, with the Financial Services Agency suggesting a raft of much tougher requirements before home-buyers can leave the bank with a mortgage in their pockets.

The industry, however, is fighting back.

Well worth noting is a speech made on Friday by Matthew Wyles, chairman of the Council of Mortgage Lenders, in which he suggested lenders and mortgage brokers are being treated by regulators as "the sweetshop owners - or worse, the drug dealers at the school gates - of the mortgage market, enticing innocent consumers in and then getting them hooked, for their own evil, profit-driven purposes".

The Nationwide boss argues borrowers should not be treated as children who don't know what's good for them, and that the industry has a track record of delivering on the lifestyle to which many people aspire.

So requiring lenders to check not only on earnings, but on customers' consumption pattern - as Mr Wyles puts it, of food, booze and fags - he points out this could put up operating costs for lenders (though he stops short of pointing out that such costs are bound to be passed on).

And he suggests that the inability to meet mortgage payments is much more often down to unforeseen circumstances, such as unemployment, than it is down to customers fibbing to bank managers when the loan is taken out.

"The effect of this is that getting a mortgage is going to get slower and more expensive, but for what?" asks the mortgage lenders' chairman. "Who really benefits, and who loses out?"

And he went on to attack "a lack of political honesty" about the implications of a big increase in regulation. Rather than helping competition, Matthew Wyles says it's sure to squeeze the smaller lenders, and building societies in particular.