Wednesday 23 September 2009

Fun With Numbers: Pent up supply

Hansard, 1 September 2009:

Sarah Teather: To ask the Secretary of State for Communities and Local Government what the average length of time was between a home being placed on the market and being sold in the latest period for which figures are available. [287506].

John Healey: We do not collect the data requested.


*ahem*

From the Rightmove website: "Rightmove has over 650,000 properties for sale throughout the UK..."*

HM Revenue & Customs (Table 16.1): Number of residential property transaction completions with value £40,000 or above: 755,000**

So, shouldn't the answer to Ms Teather's question have been "About a year. You could have found that in ten minutes on the Internet"?

*/ahem*

* Plus an unknown figure not advertised on Rightmove, for example properties sold privately or by auctioneers.

** The DCLG (Table 530) gives a figure of 725,000 for 2008 Q3 to 2009 Q2, which includes "some transactions of non-market housing including, Right-to-Buy sales and large scale stock transfers between Local Authorities and Registered Social Landlords". Note 5 says "HMRC estimate that by applying the £40,000 threshold 12% of residential property transactions ... are missed."

3 comments:

BTS said...

I thought that the internet only did porn.

You live and learn..

w/v: gleonb - that LHC thingamijig sure is taking it's time to find those buggers..

James Higham said...

Lies or incompetence? Or simply don't care?

Mark Wadsworth said...

BTS, it's good for statporn as well.

JH, "don't care" I assume, neither on her part nor on his.