Average England and Wales house price has been falling since March. In Reading where I live prices are now down over 8% year on year. However, you wouldn't think so on a skim read of the report. The VIs behind the house price stats are laid bare by the headlines they choose. LSL Acadata series is based on LR data, like the ONS one. Ignore also the results from July, which are based on a pathetic 1,300 reported sales, things only become clear at 2-3 months distance, since that's when most of the data are in. Probably it will have ticked up when the dust has cleared due to stamp duty holiday, but that's a one-off.

Surely this can't be the first time HMRC have considered this. I guess the furlough money has to come from somewhere and as the comments note it won't be from Amazon or Google.

"However, there are two other areas offering better value for foreign buyers at present. In the last year, house prices in the City of London have fallen by £60,868. When combining this reduced cost of investing with the £30,851 stamp duty saving made by buying now, foreign buyers are some £91,720 better off investing in the London property market at present." This article doesn't mention the pound also down about 6% roughly against dollar etc compared with this time last year.

Overpaid to travel to London for a house to you need to pay for 25 years. Now when the income stops you are stuck

The old Government policy of providing money to people via asset appreciation. This has been going on for 20 years plus at least. The first thing I my stats teacher taught me was, if there is not enough transactions, the data is meaningless. So here as well is the transactions are half as usual and and coming from a point of closure. They do not matter. The housing index calculating companies will not tell you that, there is a bank behind them to run this as a business. There is a conflict of interest on the biggest purchase you make in your life and this should be separated.

Jim Cramer explains why markets do funny things. With BP as example when the market was good and dividend up its stocks went up 5% pre-pandemic. Post pandemic, profits down, dividend cuts, moving business to non carbon. Stock up 7.5%. Back to housing, the market does not go up always because BoE printing press is on, Free money given to top 1% to buyout the poor. Govt giving helicopter money to keep peace. Its just the plain old stupid punter who over pays for their house (rent or buy). And that leads to others needing to pay more.

"Back then, we were so upset about inflation that we were willing to endure a recession to fight it. Now, we are so resistant to a recession that we are willing to endure much more inflation." and perhaps more pertinently "By the time the 1970s ended, financial assets were cheap, while real assets were expensive. Today, it’s just the opposite."