A search for Estate agents over a 7 year period

Useful info revealed by The Bank of England today. They have discovered that property relevant Google search data can provide an accurate and pretty immediate prediction of where house prices are going.  The key is the collection and analysis of this data over various time periods from a simply massive and relevant sample.

It has been demonstrated that changes in the number of  searches for specific terms directly relates to subsequent changes in the property market place. There’s research from The US where it was found that a modest one percentage point increase in search frequency about “real estate agents” preceded an extra 67,700 house sales in the average US state.

Anyone can access  Google Insights. Type in a relevant property related search term, adjust the filter dates and location and draw your own conclusions from the results.

A useful additional resource to consult along with the usual suspects – The Nationwide, Halifax, The Council of Mortgage Lenders, R.IC.S and The Land registry!

Labels: house price statistics

Firstly let me say I wasn’t involved in finding it. I might have struggled to come to terms with suggesting a client pay £6,000 a square foot for a flat as grateful as I would have been for the commission fee.  The cheapest one bed (1,000 sq ft) start at £5m.

There are about 85 units many of which are reserved or exchanged. The development as a whole should be completed in weeks.

People say (don’t want to sound like Jeremy Clarkson) that the buyer is Sheik Hamad who owns Al Jazeera the Arab media outfit. Perhaps he will create a spur to Al Jazeeras offices off an existing underground walkway to the Mandarin Continental & The French Embassy so he can avoid the traffic. He will have bullet proof windows, SAS trained guards and a panic room too.

Want to see more? Go to the architects site for some interesting facts or perhaps the agents site for a musical and visual experience you may or may not feel justifies the price tag!

Labels: house price statistics

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