House prices slipped back by 0.3% month-on-month in February - but there are signs that the pace of growth in values is starting to strengthen, Halifax has reported.

The monthly fall in values is the first since October and it partially reverses a 1.9% jump in January. It means the average UK house price now stands at £192,372.

Despite the monthly decline, on a quarterly basis the pace of property price growth is picking up, Halifax said.

Prices in the three months to February were 2.6% higher than in the preceding three months. It is also the second month in a row that the quarterly measure of house price growth has grown stronger.

Quarterly changes in prices are often seen as a more reliable indication of underlying trends in the market as they tend to smooth out monthly volatility.

The report also found that prices were 8.3% higher than a year earlier, drifting down from an 8.5% year-on-year increase in January and well below a peak of 10.2% in July last year, at a time when the housing market was particularly heated.

Martin Ellis, a housing economist at Halifax, said recent increases in people's real earnings and spending power are likely to have boosted the quarterly increase, alongside continued low mortgage rates and stamp duty changes in December, which have made the tax cheaper for the majority of home buyers who are liable to pay it.

He continued: "The supply of both new and second hand homes available remains low; another factor which is likely to be supporting house prices."

Halifax pointed to recent evidence that activity in the housing market is lifting. It said Bank of England figures have shown that the number of mortgage approvals made to home-buyers increased for the second month in a row in January.

These increases followed five monthly falls in approvals between July and November last year.

Howard Archer, chief UK and European economist at IHS Global Insight, said the 0.3% fall in house prices in January looks like a "limited correction" after house prices unexpectedly increased by 1.9% month on month.

Monthly changes in January can be particularly volatile due to low numbers of house sales taking place at that time of year.

He said: "We suspect that housing market activity is now gradually turning around after losing appreciable momentum from the early-2014 peak levels, and we see activity picking up modestly as 2015 progresses."

He said that while he expects house prices to increase by around 5% across 2015, compared with the double-digit year-on-year-growth seen last year, "nevertheless, the upside for housing market activity is expected to be constrained by more stretched house prices-to-earnings ratios, tighter checking of prospective mortgage borrowers by lenders and the knowledge that interest rates will eventually start rising, albeit gradually".

Charlie Wells, managing director of buying agency Prime Purchase, said: "As for the next few months, t he general election will give some home owners an excuse not to put their property on the market until certainty returns. But if you have something special to sell, then it will always sell, whether a general election is looming or not."