How Tory HQ got it totally wrong on house prices

Just before Christmas I had a mildly diverting row with the hard-working trolls from Tory press office on Twitter. They claimed – rather implausibly – that house prices were falling, whilst I’d argued that house prices were rising in part due to the government’s bribe/ giveaway/help-to-buy scheme:

Rather oddly, the Tory Press team wouldn’t say why they chose to use data from website RightMove rather than the ONS – or even whether they considered falling house prices to be a good thing.

Today the ONS announced that “In the 12 months to November 2013 UK house prices increased by 5.4%”.

They were wrong, wrong, wrong. An apology would be nice…