By Kate Faulkner

It's essential to monitor all the markets.

The problem with property price reports in isolation is that they don’t consider what’s actually happening from a volume perspective.

I study property data on a daily basis and believes it’s wrong to talk about the property market as if there is just one.

There are lots of property markets and it’s essential to monitor what’s happening with regular buyers and sellers, new homes, auction houses, rentals and investors.

There are also other market indicators that are much better than property price reports which indicate what’s happening now and likely to happen in the future.

For example, a company called For Sale Sign Analysis monitors Sold boards versus For Sale boards at regional level.

At the height of the market, on average across England and Wales, most areas showed 40 per cent of properties were Sold versus For Sale.

Since 2008, Sold versus For Sale boards fell to around 14 per cent, but since the New Year the number of Sold versus For Sale boards has increased each month to their current levels of 29.5 per cent.

Finally, another indicator on whether the market has bottomed out or not is the price and sale of new homes.

Unlike second home owners, developers will sell their properties at a price people are willing to pay.

Last year, new homes prices fell but this year as they are being sold at similar prices to the cost of building, developers would struggle to drop them further.

Where are the property markets heading in 2009?

All property markets are in dire straits, mostly due to the lack of volume, which is very much influenced by doom and gloom reports lowering confidence and the lack of mortgage availability, coupled with the fear of, or actual unemployment.

The only market doing well from a volume perspective is the rental market, which although prices are depressed slightly, is booming with people opting to rent rather than buy.

Kate Faulkner is one of the UK’s top property experts and author of Which? property books and managing director of consumer property website http://www.designsonproperty.co.uk/