A baffling report issued by the Government yesterday (Tuesday) showed that its own official statisticians are completely at odds over the direction of the housing market and are working to entirely different figures.
The Communities and Local Government data showed that in March, UK house prices increased by 0.9% over the year and by 1.2% over the month.
The CLG report put the average UK house price at £205,565 in March.
The report is at total odds with the other official report into house prices, released by the Land Registry.
Just two weeks ago, on May 4, the Land Registry reported that house prices in March fell by 1.1% in the month, and by 2.3% over the year.
The Land Registry – reporting for England and Wales, rather than for the whole of the UK – put the average house price in March at £160,996.
However, the fact that the Land Registry reported house prices for only England and Wales should – according to the CLG report – have actually boosted the Land Registry findings.
According to the CLG report, average house prices increased during the year, March 2010 to March 2011, in England (1.3%) but decreased in Scotland (-0.7%), Wales (-2.5%) and Northern Ireland (-13.9%).
CLG itself said last year that it was uncomfortable with the different findings of house survey reports.
It proposed an investigation starting with the Government’s own two surveys, that of CLG and the Land Registry.
The investigation was due to have reported back before the end of last year, but nothing has been heard of it.
Meanwhile, the two official reports have continued to pump out diverging results.
By contrast, the Halifax and Nationwide monthly reports have been singing from a broadly similar maths sheet for some months, consistently reporting house prices at around the £165,000 mark.
