There were 106,480 residential property transactions in August, HMRC has reported, claiming that this was a rise on both a monthly and an annual basis.

Not so.

The figure, both “provisional” and “seasonally adjusted”, is up 3.1% on July’s sales and 5.7% higher than August last year.

However, when “non-adjusted”, sales figures were actually lower – down 7.4% on August and down 1.9% on August last year.

The non-seasonally adjusted figure (ie, the actual) was 112,490 transactions in August, a tumble from 121,480 non-adjusted transactions in July, and down from the 114,720 number of August 2014.

Yesterday, even the BBC managed to report that property transactions had gone up.

Both seasonally adjusted and non-adjusted figures remain sharply down from their peaks in 2006 and 2007.

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