Government House Sales Figures May Be Wrong

The government has admitted that several months of its official statistics , published monthly by HM Revenue & Customs (HMRC), on UK housing sales may be wrong.

Publication of the data for July, which was due today, has been postponed until 21 September so that the figures can be checked for as far back as March.The possibility of errors appears to have come to light while the figures were being compared against date from previous months.

HMRC's report, which tallies all homes sold in the UK for more than £40,000, has previously served as a crucial indicator of the health of the mortgage market. This is because it provides an official total of how active the housing - and therefore the home loans - market is at a given time.

June's figures from HMRC showed that property sales had dropped 45 percent year-on-year to reach 77,000. Mortgage statistics from the same month, released by the Bank of England, showed that loan numbers had dropped by 69 percent.

Moreover, latest sales totals from the Land Registry - from April 2008 - said that numbers were down by 39 percent when compared with the same month in 2007. It is not known whether the HMRC statistics are to be revised upwards or downwards due to the discovery.

Commenting on BBC reports HMRC said“Our statisticians have come to the conclusion that something doesn't look quite right,” .