Friday, Aug 27, 2010

As the BEEB would say: House Price Inflation 'Easing'

Land Registry - July 2010 HPI: Monthly Change 0.4%, Annual Change 6.7%

I really believe London should have its own HPI. Looking at these stats, the huge prices paid in the capital clearly skew the figures massively. Anyway, looks like the falls are starting in the North of England first, perhaps where there are more public sector workers??

Posted by hash browne @ 12:16 PM (763 views) Add Comment

13 Comments

1. sibley's love child said...

Indeed, the sales volumes on pg13 pretty much lends weight to the top-end-skewing-the-stats theory. There's an almost perfect correlation between the increase of homes sold with the amount of money they change hands for. The numbers of homes sold under 200k have decreased between May 09 and May 10. Sales of homes between 200k and 2mil+ have all increased.

Loved this little nugget:

The number of properties sold in England & Wales for over £1 million increased by 67% between May 2009 and May 2010.

Skew-tastic, mate!

Friday, August 27, 2010 12:30PM Report Comment
 

2. phdinbubbles said...

@sibberslovechiled

Isn't that skew effect partly due to the fact the same houses have jumped the pricing bands because of the overall price increae?

e.g. if the number of houses that were at ~£95000 and are now at ~£105000 is less than the number of houses that were ~£145000 and are now ~£155000, then the number of houses sold in the £100000 to £150000 band will have decreased. Above this average house price area, the effect works the other way, i.e. more coming in to the bottom end of the band than leaving at the top, due to the distribution of types of houses.

Friday, August 27, 2010 12:48PM Report Comment
 

3. sibley's love child said...

Hmm, I didn't consider that; i'm no statistician evidently.

Friday, August 27, 2010 01:03PM Report Comment
 

4. hash browne said...

@phdinbubbles

These are sold prices so you wouldn't get the same house in 2 different months.

Besides, the point is, the huge increase in houses selling at the top end of the market can massively skew the figures.

For example, if 50 houses were all sold for £150k, the average price would obviously be £150k.

If you add just 1 house sold at £1M to this, all of a sudden the average house price has increased circa 11% to £166k.

Personally, I think there should be sets of stats for the average 2 bed house, 3 bed house, etc, etc.

Friday, August 27, 2010 01:40PM Report Comment
 

5. justwatching said...

?

Friday, August 27, 2010 02:25PM Report Comment
 

6. justwatching said...

forgot my password, just testing with number 5.
Hash, you've got it a bit wrong. The LR figures work on matched pairs of houses, which make it IMHO a more accurate reflection of what is happening.

Friday, August 27, 2010 02:31PM Report Comment
 

7. brickormortis said...

I have asked before but does anyone know in simpletons terms how house prices are calculated. Are we talking a simple mean average or median average? Is it of only prices sold? Is tehre a weighting to cancel out regional variaion adn southern influence etc.? What would happen if only one house priced at £300,000 sold in September?

Secondly, what if a house was bought fort £200,000 in 2002, had £40,000 of renovations carried out and sold for £300,000? The like for like house increases but its underlying value relative to condition might not? How is that measured?

Friday, August 27, 2010 02:45PM Report Comment
 

8. Oldgit said...

Scan the "differences" column on Page 13 (By Volume), it's almost a vertical line as quantities at the lower levels are depleted and not replaced, disturbing!

Friday, August 27, 2010 03:16PM Report Comment
 

9. mark wadsworth said...

Brickor, the most reliable stat's are Nationwide. Of course they are all skewed, intentionally or otherwise, but when you are dealing with hundreds of thousands of transactions, it all tends to even out.

HMLR figure are indeed based on repeat sales, but their official average is far higher than Nationwide. The DCLG figures are also much higher.

The stat's published by HM Revenue & Customs for stamp duty purposes (Table 16.1 download from here) tie in reasonably well with Nationwide, i.e. they show a median of £150,000 which as we would expect is a tad less than the arithmetical mean from Nationwide so that seems reliable enough to me.

Friday, August 27, 2010 03:20PM Report Comment
 

10. mark wadsworth said...

Brickor - your second para highlights the weakness in HMLR data!

Friday, August 27, 2010 03:21PM Report Comment
 

11. hash browne said...

@6

Ahh fair enough, my mistake.

I presume that's why they don't include new builds.... it's starting to make sense to me now... kind of.

So they're comparing the price paid for a house now with what the same house was previously bought for???

Friday, August 27, 2010 04:15PM Report Comment
 

12. brickormortis said...

Did the UK ever measue house pirces using hte median? It would seem to be by far the best way, not alloowing extreme data to carry influence over the whole set.

£150,000 is a considerably more realistic average and reflects what many buyers adn sellers are experiencing. The problem for many is that they use these media headline measures of mean house prices across the country adn expect them to apply to their specific house in some shitty lane in nowheresville.

Friday, August 27, 2010 04:57PM Report Comment
 

13. phdinbubbles said...

@4 hash browne

Sorry to get back to this at a ridiculously late stage (i've been away for the last few days) - I don't think you've understood the point I was making. 1. The transaction (referred to by sibley's love child) volumes are in comparison to a year earlier. 2. The numbers of properties in each price band vary naturally (as a distribution) with the average area around 1500000-200000, so a 10% increase in prices across the board over that time period will naturally lead to lower volumes below the mean and higher volumes above the mean than a year earlier, which is entirely due to the distribution of property types. 3. All of the propoperty indices take into account the distribution of property types and any skewing that might occur due to different volumes of sales in different price bands by weighting them accordingly.

"Besides, the point is, the huge increase in houses selling at the top end of the market can massively skew the figures."

Wrong, for the reasons stated.

Monday, August 30, 2010 02:28PM Report Comment
 

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