1. Reviewing Residential Property Price Indices in the UK
Emily Carless
National Statistician’s Office, UK Statistics Authority

2. Overview Residential Property Price Indices in the UK
Users and uses of the statistics
Framework for a definitive official house price index
Recommendations of the review
Next steps

3. Official indices (1) Department for Communities and Local Government
Sample of mortgages
Hedonic regression/ mix adjusted UK
Monthly since 2002 / Quarter from 1968

4. Official indices (2) Land Registry Registers of Scotland
Registered sales
Repeat Sales Regression
England and Wales
Back cast to 1995
Registers of Scotland
Simple average
Scotland
Published since 2003 (monthly, quarterly and 4 week)

5. Non-official statistics
Halifax (mortgage lender)
Nationwide (mortgage lender)
Rightmove (website advertising property)
LSL/Acadametrics
Hometrack/ Royal Institute of Chartered Surveyors

6. Why review?
“concern as to whether the public and policy makers have access to the most accurate, up to date and complete data in the most helpful form when they make decisions about the housing market”
Review by the UK National Statistician as chief statistical advisor to Government and head of the Government Statistical Service

7. Different stages
Different coverage

8. Different estimates

9. Timeliness

10. Users and uses Online consultation Over 200 responses
What type of user represent?
Which sources used?
What use house prices for?
What ‘domains’ they use?
Satisfaction with official statistics
Over 200 responses

11. User group and source
Percentage of each user group using each source of house price statistics

12. Uses made of House Price Statistics
Percentage of users describing their use of house price statistics as in each category

13. Groupings/ domains
Percentage of respondents using each grouping of house price indices

14. Framework for a definitive house price index
Represent the prevailing market price of residential property at completion of sale.
Measure both house prices and house price inflation based on the price paid for transacted properties.
Have a UK coverage.
Generate estimates (at least) monthly.
Be timely with minimal revisions.
Be available as a seasonally adjusted and an unadjusted series.
Provide a consistent index series to enable trend analysis.
Provide robust sub-regional estimates and estimates for user defined areas.
Provide comparable estimates for sub-sets of transactions or properties.

15. In addition they should …
Be accompanied by a clear explanation of the methods used to construct the statistics and indicators of the quality of those measures.
Provide a commentary of key findings and relationship to other house price statistics and housing market indicators, including those produced from non-official sources.
Be easy to find, view and download.
Seek National Statistic status.

16. How statistics measure up

17. Recommendations
A single definitive house price index and accompanying statistics should be produced by the official statistics producer community which meets the framework outlined.
A regular official statistics report should be developed presenting and analysing official house price measures and their relationship to other non-official sources and wider housing market indicators.

18. Next steps
Department for Communities and Local Government and Land Registry will report back to the National Statistician
The National Statistician will publish a statement prior to Easter 2011 on how this issue will be taken forward
The National Statistician is reviewing wider housing market indicators that should accompany house price statistics

19. ? Questions emily.carless@statistics.gov.uk
Link to report: