Just before the weekend I read the BBC news article ‘House Price Rise Hits 5-Year High’. Really??! Quoting from the article:

“House prices in England and Wales rose by 1.7% in July compared with June - the biggest monthly leap in value since July 2004, the Land Registry said.” I checked with the Land registry website and this is indeed true. Fantastic.

But this isn’t a leap! This +1.7% blip is measured against the previous month’s -13.4% fall on last year, which in itself was a massive fall on the year before that. So really not that much of a leap then is it? - A bit like losing £200k then finding a fiver.

The article continues to describe a stagnant market of total property sales down by almost 50% nationwide – and that includes the fact that: ‘..more of the cheapest homes were being sold. Sales of homes which cost less than £50,000 rose by 50% from 508 in May 2008 to 760 a year later.’

According to the Land Registry website the average house price in Hampshire rose by 0.6% last month, bringing the annual change in house price so far this year right up to –14.8%, with the average Hampshire house price currently sitting at £189,422.

Apparently over 60% of newspaper readers only have the limited attention span to read the headlines of any article, and therefore the newspaper (or website in this case) can promote its political view to world events by the messages contained in news headlines. Before you roll your eyes and shout ‘another conspiracy theorist’ try it for yourself: read a newspaper (Times perhaps) first headlines only, then actually read all the articles - I bet you will feel much different about events the second time.