Thursday 27 November 2008

House pricery

This is a strange article.

The sharp decline in the UK housing market is slowing after the Bank of England slashed interest rates by 1.5 per cent earlier this month. Figures from Nationwide, Britain’s biggest building society, show that the fall in annual house prices slowed to 13.9 per cent this month from 14.6 per cent in October. The fall is the smallest decline since house prices started falling in November 2007.


At no point does the journalist tell us what the fall in house prices was. Presumambly if the fall is the smallest decline since house prices started falling in November 2007 she means that the monthly decline (month-on-month) was the smallest, not that 13.9% is the smallest year-on-year decline.

Saturday 1 November 2008

A lottery

A woman is selling her house via a lottery. She says:

Mrs Monaghan, from Walton-on-Thames, said: ' Everybody wins. The seller gets their asking price without the anxiety of waiting for an offer or estate agent costs, and also receives a donation to their favourite charity. 'The buyer gets a property at a fraction of its market value.'


But not everyone is a winner. 7,899 people who have paid £75 each are losers.