1. House Price Measurement in New Zealand and Australia Frances Krsinich - Statistics New Zealand Mark Dubner – Australian Bureau of Statistics 10 –12 May 2010 Joint ILO/UNECE meeting on CPIs

2. Introduction Stocktake of measures in NZ and Australia Different dimensions: - quality adjustment - timing - weighting - coverage 2

3. Introduction Long run trends are similar across measures (within each country) Short term movements vary Eurostat guide 3

4. Quality Adjustment Composition of sales vary each period Common methods: - hedonic regression - mix-adjustment / stratification - repeat sales - (SPAR used in NZ) 4

5. Quality adjustment Can only adjust for characteristics we have data on Repeat sales – like with like – but some issues 5

6. Timing Timeliness versus accuracy Different points at which price can be captured: - sale agreed - finance approved - contracts exchanged - settlement 6

7. Weighting What are we trying to measure? Weights required to adjust sales data to stocks In practice – may not make much difference (examples…) 7

8. Australia ABS house price index - stratified - also project homes Private organisations - APM - stratified medians - Residex – repeat sales - REIA – medians - RP Data Rismark – variety of methods - Commonwealth Bank – first home buyers 8

9. Australian measures – long term 9

10. Australian measures – short term 10

11. New Zealand No official house price index New homes – home ownership in NZ CPI Quotable Value - quarterly - accurate (SPAR method) but late (3.5 months) REINZ - monthly - less accurate (national median) but timely (2 weeks) - new stratified approach, tracks QV well 11

12. New Zealand measures – long term 12

13. New Zealand measures – shorter term 13

14. New Zealand and Australian measures combined 14