A huge gap emerged between HMRC’s seasonal and non-adjusted estimates for property transactions last month.
HMRC recorded 84,010 sales across the UK for February, up 2.8% year-on-year on a non-adjusted basis.
However, on a seasonally adjusted basis, HMRC said sales were up 2.7% to 101,780.
The seasonal figure from HMRC has historically been a lot higher than the non-adjusted numbers at this time of year due to the way the taxman measures transactions t0 remove the impact of factors such as weather and the variation of the length of a month.
All the figures are provisional as they are based on Stamp Duty returns and there is a time lag between purchases and when these are filed.
This means the non-adjusted figures could be higher, as could the seasonal data.
On a regional basis, Northern Ireland saw an 8.1% annual boost in transactions, while the markets in England and Scotland were up 3.6% and 3.8% respectively.
Only Wales saw a fall, with volumes down 18.7% annually.
Source: Property Eye
