This week, the US economy passed a small milestone. For the first time in six years, a Gallup survey showed that just over half of Americans now expect house prices to rise over the next year.

That is a sharp contrast to last year, when most people expected further falls. And it follows a host of other upbeat signals: CoreLogic reports that US house values rose at their fastest pace in February since 2006; the pace of home sales has jumped; unsold inventories have declined; and developers have even started to build more homes again.

Little wonder that some senior US economic officials are quietly celebrating an end to the great housing market crash; or, at least, are expressing hopes that the market is “healing” due to a typically American combination of creative destruction (ie defaults) and entrepreneurial instincts (bottom-fishing investors).