House prices are going up - there is no doubt about that.
But how much and where depends on the data looked at.
Last week Land Registry issued its November data showing an annual price increase of 3.2%, which takes the average property value in England and Wales to £165,411.
The monthly change from October to November shows an increase of 0.1%.
Repossession volumes decreased by 23% in September 2013 to 1036 compared with 1337 in September 2012.
In contrast to the latest data from Nationwide which saw Manchester house prices surge 21% in a year, Land Registry said the region in England and Wales which experienced the greatest increase in its average property value over the last 12 months was London with a movement of 10.6%.
So why is there such variation?
Largely it depends on the data sampled and the specifics of the city or region looked at - the borders can vary and as such results can appear skewed.
At EAT we think the way forward is a definitive poll of polls where all the leading data sources are - where possible - amalgamated into one and averaged out.
This will still jar with many but perhaps is the only way to really gets to grips with this data disparity.
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Comments
How many people actually care? Is it in the press in endless stories, most of it is just PR to get free press, the general public do not think about endlessly!
Such stories just leave room for those seeking to show the rest of us how clever they are to spout on here. (normal chaps as ever)
If prices are up by a % or down, it really makes little difference to anyone’s buying or selling decision.
I love EW's explanation - made me smile - so true.
@Leed Agent, the Land registry doesn't leave anything out of the stuff I look at only properties that haven't transacted.
That wasn't the point of my post, as Connor Shilling claims not to be writing the content for EAT we have to assume it was Mr Norwood, whoever it was that put this article together does not understand our industry and should not be in a position of proclaiming to be the voice of the industry; other media sorts will get hold of this idea and all of a sudden a really stupid suggestion could become mainstream fact with every greedy vendor and lender relying wholly on spurious nonsense.
Really? You're suggesting taking already poorly compiled and inaccurate stats and taking the average of that? In what world is that going to help?
The quality of average data is only going to be as good as the data you put into it. Adding bad data to other bad data does not good data make!
It's impossible to amalgamate these reports, since the data they are tracking is totally different. Halifax and Nationwide are basing their numbers on their own mortgage approvals, which represent something like 5 and 12% of the market respectively. Lloyds for example are just starting to issue HTB mortgages, so it's a fair bet that their index will tick up in the next few months (although today's release is down).
The Land Registry doesn't have the commercial background that the others do and is now including repo details in updates. It does lag the others, but at least tracks actual sold data.
Acadametrics is funded by a whole army of banking vested interests, which completely undermines their credibility and partly explains why the average UK house price figure they quote is the highest of any survey (excluding Rightmove's Asking Price index, which often gets presented as a sold price index in the media...).
Halifax and Nationwide house price indices are always wrong. I agree with EW. Halifax = North and Nationwide = South. Halifax put out a press release in February to say that house prices in our area had risen by 14.8%. Complete rubbish. They had probably gone up by 1.48%! LR figures are facts and cover 100% of the market. Halifax and Nationwide cover about 20%.
Variations of borders does not account for most of the major differences in reports.
I cannot think of anything worse than amalgamating all the data and spewing it out as the definitive figures. EAT should know better! We all know that many of the reports are inaccurate to the point of dishonesty to enable the sources to receive free media coverage and those that are fairly accurate rarely receive the coverage they deserve.
The current land registry report will ring true to most agents, I would have thought. The increase in London seems to tally with reports on the ground and the national increase in property values, when London is taken out of the equation, will ring true with most provincial practitioners and is considerably below the rate of inflation which means that values have been falling in real terms outside the city state.
The best way to sort out this problem is for those estate agents who have the ear of the media to continually point out the reasons for the discrepancies in reports and then we might see some more accurate figures at some point.
@Goodgrief
All house price figures are statistically flawed, INCLUDING Land registry as the strip out certain transactions before publishing.
It's well known the banks manipulate the figures and always have.
i think you'll find this is exactly what the Acadametrics report does - it even includes Land Reg data. It always amazes me that this most accurate and non geographically weighted report never got more purchase with the media ( probably because the journalists struggled to spell it ) ;)
In reality it's because headline grabbing numbers, up or down is what the papers want more than they actually want accuracy!
Its simple.
Halifax = north
Nationwide = South
HMLR = everything
All are 3 months out of date from when the price was agreed.
The other story said something about fluffy journalism Anyone who has ever had any training in property valuation would understand that each property is its own market and it is simply not possible to get anything at all meaningful out of a poll of polls, it certainly won't be definitive.
You can get away with writing cobblers for an industry naive audience but that simply will not wash here.
The only definitive comment on property prices is the historic record provided by the land registry, everything else is statistically flawed.
With only 5% of properties transacting each year it is not possible to say that the tranactions of the small % of properties sold each year can have any bearing on the other 95%. Any mass attempt to cash in on a boom results in an immediate over supply with a corresponding fall in values.