Before you plough through this let me share my conclusion which is house owners should always take a long term view of their properties value. If you don’t agree with a house price prediction you will always find another one that suits you.

Monthly stats can show a variance of 5%. If you wanted good news in July you would have gone with the Halifax who had house prices up .6%. If you were unlucky you would have read the Nationwides gloomy conclusion that had them fall .5% in the same month.  In 2009 these two lenders concluded that prices rose but by wildly different amounts 1.1% (Halifax) and 5.9% (Nationwide).  If lenders are using stats from sales that involve loans, is that going to be accurate?

Hometrack and Rightmove also cough up stats but in the case of Hometrack, strangely I haven’t been able to establish where they get these from. Hometrack reported that the average house price last December [2009] was £156,900 but Rightmove thought it was £221,463. Don’t get me started on the RICS. (Royal Institute of Chartered Surveyors) who apparently get their information from doing surveys of their membership. Very interesting but perhaps not scientific.

The other ‘official’ sources of pricing information are The Land Registry and The Government through their Communities and Local Government arm. The Land Registrys figures seem obvious to use but they lag behind three months.

One problem seems to be that some indices take stats from different stages of the selling process. Some organisations use houses going on the market. Some use completions and theres no agreed benchmark that everyone can rely on.

Perhaps its no surprise thats theres a review on to try and get some light on this area.

Labels: house price statistics