Nationwide reveals a house price index up 0.7% in March, leaving the annual rate of inflation at 9%, down marginally from 9.2% February-to-February. The three-month-against-three-month annual inflation rate was down, too, from 1.8% to 1.6%. The index was led - and in a big way - by the London market, up 15.7% on the year.

What?! says Jonathan Prynn on his Evening Standard blog.

Real incomes are falling, mortgage deals are still in short supply except for those with at least a 25 per cent deposit and unemployment is still close to its cyclical peak.

So how can this make any sense? It's a market, he argues, twisted out of shape by low interest rates and a tiny data set, and we'd agree. He dubs this the "phoney war - post-crisis and pre-austerity". It's an interesting piece.

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