The questions Tory HQ won’t answer on house prices

Earlier today I was subjected to a bit of Tory Party funded trolling courtesy of the CCHQ Press Office. It’s such a delight to know that Ric Holden and friends are such avid readers…

They’d decided to take exception to my criticism of “Help to Buy” – which as I’ve written before, suggests that Osborne learned nothing from the financial crisis. Their response was to use information from Right Move (who call themselves the “The UK’s number one property website”) which argues that house prices are down over the past six months. They ignored, however, the news that Right Move think house prices could be going up by 8% this year.

What seemed odd though is that the Tory Press Office seemed to be crowing about house prices falling (if, indeed, they are). That certainly seems like a change to the party line – and I’m not sure how many Tory voters (or Tory supporting newspapers) would feel about the Tory party crowing about falling house prices…

In a bid to get to them bottom of their seeming change of heart, I asked the good people at Tory HQ a couple of questions:

– Why are they using data from Right Move (a private company), rather than the ONS (an official government body)? (The last ONS stats released said, for example, that first time buyers are paying 5.3% more this year than last year).

– And do the Tory Party think that falling house prices are a good thing? (I do, but I’m surprised Tory HQ agree)

Since I asked these questions the CCHQ Press team, who had been keen to chat about my views on housing, went mysteriously quiet.

Go on guys, I’ve got all day…