FOI Ref: FOI/2021/2839
You asked
Of the total house sales in the first quarter of 2021 (428,620), please supply how many were included and how many were not excluded in the House Price Index?
We said
Thank you for your enquiry.
Unfortunately, we are unable to match your quoted number of transactions for the first quarter of 2021 (428,620). If you are using the monthly property transactions statistics, published by HM Revenue and Customs, we calculate this figure to be 449,360 (on a seasonally adjusted basis).
In terms of how many were included and how many were excluded from the UK House Price Index, just over 270,000 transactions were included from January to March (Quarter 1) 2021 when producing the UK HPI for the latest publication for June 2021 (published on 18 August 2021). Transaction counts that feed into the UK HPI are available for any period up to 2 months prior to the reference month in the sales volume dataset available on the HMLR website via the following link: Sales (landregistry.gov.uk).
However, it should be noted that there are differences between transaction numbers in the UK HPI dataset and the monthly property transactions statistics data, meaning that the two are not comparable:
Firstly, because of the time it can take for a sold property to be registered with HM Land Registry, transactions for previous months will continue to feed through into the UK HPI dataset for a period after they were initially sold. For the UK HPI we publish these statistics under a 12 months revisions policy, allowing time for any delays in the registration of property transactions to feed through into the index.
Secondly, the coverage is different for both releases. We believe that the main reason for this difference is that residential properties where the buyer or seller is a corporate body, company or business are excluded from the HM Land Registry data in the UK HPI, but included in HMRC property transaction statistics.
In relation to the most recent UK HPI publication, it is also worth noting that we have only, to date, published transaction counts for April of Quarter 2. This is because of the 2 months lag between the publication of the UK HPI and the transaction counts for a particular reference month. As noted on the HMLR website, the sales volume dataset contains counts of all sales included in the electronic register at the time of data extraction. The data collection delay mainly affects the most recent months and as such, the two most recent months are therefore omitted from this data to avoid reporting misleading volumes.
If you require any further information regarding your request, please do not hesitate to get in touch via our email address: hpi@ons.gov.uk.