A mistake in the statistics has thrown the home sales findings in to doubt, it has been suggested.
HM Revenue & Customs (HMRC) has withdrawn some of its housing figures due to an apparent error, the BBC reports.
Some of last month's statistics have been found by the body, which provides property market information to the government, to be wrong - potentially skewing sales figures back as far as march. The withdrawal has therefore delayed today's planned release of the figures.
HMRC's report, which tallies all homes sold in the UK for more than £40,000, has previously served as a crucial indicator of the health of the mortgage market. This is because it provides an official total of how active the housing - and therefore the home loans - market is at a given time.
June's figures from HMRC showed that property sales had dropped 45 percent year-on-year to reach 77,000. Mortgage statistics from the same month, released by the Bank of England, showed that loan numbers had dropped by 69 percent.
Moreover, latest sales totals from the Land Registry - from April 2008 - said that numbers were down by 39 percent when compared with the same month in 2007. It is not known whether the HMRC statistics are to be revised upwards or downwards due to the discovery.
The new figures covering July are now to be released on September 21st.
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