Residential property sales fell in January, HMRC has reported.

There was a fall in both its “seasonally adjusted” figures and its “actuals”.

“Seasonally adjusted” sales fell by 1.4% compared with December, and by 6% compared with January last year.

There were 97,320 residential sales on a “seasonally adjusted” basis.

However, when not adjusted, there were just 78,740 sales in the UK, well down from the figure of 105,400 for December and the 87,280 recorded by HMRC for January 2014.