“You are going to see the builders that continue to survive, the ones that are determined to make it,” David Crowe, chief economist of the National Association of Home Builders, said ahead of the trip to Nevada. He said many of his colleagues were comfortable that their business had “turned the corner”.

Yet the fate of Mr Crowe’s industry remains in limbo. Recent housing data have been considerably softer than towards the end of last year, when hopes were high that the market had finally bottomed out. Vast swathes of the US are still suffering from high foreclosure rates, high inventories of unsold homes, and weak levels of new construction, the latter highlighted last week by news of a 4 per cent drop in December housing starts.

Cities such as Las Vegas are suffering: house prices there have fallen by 27 per cent in the past year, and by 55 per cent since the crisis began, according to the latest Standard & Poor’s Case-Shiller index.

The market is rebounding in other regions, such as parts of the north-east and mid-Atlantic states, but so far this has only led to a moderating of the annual decline in home prices – now at 7.3 per cent in the 20 cities surveyed by Case-Shiller. This is better than the near-20 per cent declines seen at the height of the crisis – but still not enough to qualify as a broad recovery.

Under these conditions, a debate is raging among economists and policymakers about the wisdom of removing some of the government aid that has helped sustain the sector since the onset of the crisis.

Chiefly, the Federal Reserve will at the end of March terminate its purchases of mortgage-backed securities. The move is expected to raise mortgage rates above the extremely low levels of recent months, although it is unclear to what extent. Some economists believe it will be a relatively minor jump – of 10 basis points, for example – and others forecast a bigger rise of 50 basis points.

Partially to keep mortgage rates from moving even higher, the Obama administration agreed just before Christmas to offer an unlimited credit extension to Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, the government-sponsored housing giants, for the next three years, lifting a cap that previously stood at $200bn for each company.

But looming large is also the expiration of the homebuyer tax credit, an $8,000 (€5,700, £5,000) reward for purchases of new homes regarded as having temporarily bolstered new home sales in recent months. After having been extended once already, it is slated to end in April again, and few are expecting it to be renewed for a second time.

Economists say the nervousness surrounding the end of state support for the housing market would not be as bad if the unemployment rate were not hovering around 10 per cent, with little light at the end of the tunnel. Workers with jobs are much more likely to stay in their homes even if they are “underwater” – or their mortgages are worth more than their houses.

Even though the Treasury and housing departments last week reported an acceleration of loan modifications, there are fears foreclosures could still top the 2009 level of 2.8m.