By Alan Cleaver

Property

THERE seemed to be some Christmas cheer when a flurry of headlines declared house sales had hit a new high. Property sales were up in November to 85,000 – the highest figure in over a year. I would have pulled a cracker and broken open the champagne but for my natural fear that kicks in whenever any journalist writes about statistics (and I include myself). My reaction, to borrow a phrase from science writer Ben Goldacre, is always “I think you’ll find it’s a bit more complicated than that”.

The figures had come from the taxman – the HMRC – and do indeed show UK sales in November for 85,000. You have to go back to July 2010 to find a figure of 89,000. But the figure is provisional and it’s not seasonally adjusted (the seasonally adjusted figure is 79,000). The BBC pointed out however that “the number of sales in the first 11 months of the year was lower than the same period in 2010″. And to put these figures in context, highs of 162,000 a month were being achieved in the halcyon days of 2007.

The UK Land Registry has just issued its latest figures but their sales figures lag behind so September 2011 is the latest stat which, nevertheless, shows an encouraging annual rise (in England Wales) of six per cent from 57,463 to 61,031. But it’s a small light in an otherwise dark report. The annual drop in property prices is 1.9 per cent making the average house price £160,780. Continued ...

Housing gloom: The Land Registry record widespread falls in house prices.