Signs of life may be returning to the property market.

Loans to homebuyers were 23% higher in June than they were in May. Over the same period, month on month house prices rose by 1.6%. And, for property website Rightmove, the week ending July 11 was its busiest ever.

However, before swarms of estate agents start fantasising about new Ferraris, there are those who believe this recovery may be short lived.

For example, in June unemployment reached its highest level for 14 years, and is forecast to rise still further.

Similarly, the Council of Mortgage Lenders is predicting the number of borrowers more than three months in arrears, and therefore in danger of having their homes repossessed, will increase to 170,000 by the year-end.

And Mervyn King, governor of the Bank of England, thinks “the pace of recovery over the next few years is highly uncertain.”

Inevitably, these and other factors will exert further downward pressure on the housing market.

Yet even if house prices are currently on a roller coaster path, having fallen only to rise before falling again, they will eventually reach the point at which they will fall no further.

And when that happens property programmes will again dominate the airwaves enjoying ‘must view’ status, and house hunting with a handset is likely to be the pastime of choice for much of the population.

Already, according to commercial director Miles Shipside, the Rightmove website is “getting near to 80,000 unique visitors a month coming via iPhones or iPod Touches for a total of 1.5m page views.”

As a result, Rightmove have now launched their own app allowing users to search for properties wherever their day takes them. So, were you to find yourself in a new neighbourhood and to think it would be rather nice to live there, GPS will lock on to your location to find places nearby for sale or rent.

You can then, Rightmove suggests, “view full screen colour property images in a sleek slideshow,” and even “phone the agent with a single tap” or “drop them an email straight from your phone.”

As Shipside is quoted as saying: “giving users the ability to find property around them wherever they may be was a great feature we were excited to be able to offer through the iPhone.”

That said, Vodafone users with WAP enabled handsets can also find nearby properties without needing to enter their location. Because, as Rightmove explain, “the Vodafone location lookup technology will 'find' you and show you the available properties in the area you are located.”

With Rightmove claiming their website features properties from more than 90% of all UK estate agents, there should be no shortage of properties to browse.

And despite their existing site being amongst the Top 20 most popular in the country, ranking higher than the likes of Yahoo and Friends Reunited, Shipside is sold on the potential of mobile.

“We feel,” he says, “mobile is a very important platform for the future of property search and tools like the iPhone app are here to stay.”

But for the moment a monthly total of 1.5 million iPhone and iPod page views are still little more than green shoots. After all, in that week ending July 11 alone, the Rightmove website achieved no less than 134 million page views.

Even so, the possible nightmare of the Notting Hill dinner party, where all present are tapping frantically in to their handsets, searching for property prices to “ok yah” around the table, is too depressing to contemplate.

It’s enough to make you want to throw right yuppie.