Times are tough but some experts believe we’re through the worst of it.

Can you hear it? It sounds like a distant ring, a peal of bells, not of Yuletide bonhomie but of changed fortunes in that most solid of staple investments, bricks and mortar. Shares are so yesterday. Stockbroking’s a dirty word. Nobody’s talking margin loans. But could the property market be a bellwether of better times?

At least some of the notes are on song. The Reserve Bank dropping the cash rate to 4.25 per cent and perhaps going even lower. Figures this week from the nation’s largest mortgage broker, AFG, indicate NSW first-home buyers are back in the market, with November’s loan approvals up 113 per cent on August. And Sydney house prices - despite all the doomsday scenarios - actually gained 0.51 per cent in the October quarter. There was also a 1.6 per cent increase in the number of loans for established homes in October.

"The property market has moved through the bottom of its cycle," says RP Data’s head of research, Tim Lawless.

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Mark Forytarz