Average UK house prices stood at £234,000 in August, the Office for National Statistics has reported. It said this was 1.8% higher than August 2011.
The price is in contrast to the Land Registry’s August price of £163,376, which it reported was 0.7% up on August last year.
The gap between the two indices is £79,624 but ministers have failed to explain, or even comment on, why the government continues to pump out two such different ‘official’ house price surveys.
According to the ONS report, house prices grew 2.1% in England, 0.5% in Scotland and 1.4% in Wales between August 2011 and August 2012, but dropped 12.8% in Northern Ireland.
The annual house price rise in England was driven by a 6.3% rise in London.
In August this year, prices paid by first-time buyers were 2.9% higher on average than in August 2011. For owner occupiers moving home, prices increased by 1.4% for the same period.
Comments
who do you think is supplying the figures on which the lenders base their lending? thats right Calnea.
It is a self perpetuating circle of mis-information
With no surveyors involved and no intelligent thought entering the process at any stage one tells the other something that they think is true and the other being no more informed than the first sees no reason to question it.
Compooter sez Yeeeeees!
"The Calnea valuations used to power the ONS stats are wrong, it is a random number generator, a lotto machine."
Erm... while I wouldn't argue one word of the AVM desc ription, I would draw attention to how the ONS state their report be based:
"The index is calculated using mortgage financed transactions that are collected via the Regulated Mortgage Survey by the Council of Mortgage Lenders. These cover the majority of mortgage lenders in the UK."
So - Halifax and Nationwide are in there...
...somewhere near the bottom, it seems! ;o)
If the ONS can get this so badly wrong I dread to think of how much more government policy is based on badly thought out and inaccurately sourced balderdash.
Yet another symptom of blindly believing whatever technology puts in front of you instead of engaging the brain.
The Calnea valuations used to power the ONS stats are wrong, it is a random number generator, a lotto machine.
The land registry figures are based on completions, facts.
The Ministers don't have a clue, they just accept what the civil servants tell them. The Civil servants don't care whether the figures are right or wrong.
Send them a link to the story covered here two weeks ago.