The property market appears to have picked up towards the end of the first quarter of 2018 but transactions in the first three months are well down on the same period last year, HMRC figures suggest.

HMRC’s latest UK Property Transaction Statistics show a 13% boost in residential sales between February and March to 94,140, on a non-adjusted basis.

But this is down 10.9% from the same period last year.

Broken down by region on a non-adjusted basis, sales on a monthly basis in England were up 11% to 80,140 but down 9.8% annually

Activity in Scotland was up 39.4% to 7,740 sales but 16.9% down on the same period of 2017.

Welsh sales were up 11.6% on a monthly basis to 4,230 but down 20% compared with last year, while Northern Ireland was up 2% to 2,030 between February and March but down 5.1% on an annual basis.

It is on a seasonally adjusted basis, that the gloom really sets in.

HMRC said there were 92,270 residential transactions across the UK during March, down 7.2% on a monthly basis and falling 11.8% annually.

The report also provides a provisional estimate of the number of transactions in the first quarter of 2018, suggesting there were 257,490 sales in the first three months of the year.

This is down 4.6% on the same period last year on a non-seasonally adjusted basis. On a seasonally-adjusted basis, the quarter one figures were down 5.4% to 290,670

Commentators  focused on the much gloomier seasonally adjusted data.

Mike Scott, chief property analyst at online agent Yopa, said: “The number of house sales in the UK in March showed a worrying downturn, according to HMRC. This comes as a surprise, since up until this month the figures had been holding up well.

“There have been just over 1.2m sales every year for the past four years, but the figures suggest that the total for 2018 will fall below this level for the first time since 2013.

“A drop in the number of sales is often the first sign of a downturn in the housing market as a whole, with prices falling more slowly as sellers take time to adjust to the new market conditions. However, we should not read too much into one month’s figures as March’s fall will partly be due to Easter coming earlier in the year, cutting down on the number of sales that completed at the end of the month, and possibly also the bad weather earlier on.”

Separately, there was also commentary from haart on the March market.

It said that house sales (measured at exchange) were down 10% on February and 16% on March 2017. It said that new buyer demand across its offices was up 22% on a year ago, with new supply up just 6.5%.