lolacarrascal

northern ireland house type price index Q1 2003 to Q2 2011 (re-based Q1 2003 = 100%)

Ta, just punching in the data at the minute, havn't really had a chance to consider what this quarter's figures are telling us. Anyone care to summarise?

apartment price by region Q1 2003 to Q2 2011 (re-based Q1 2003 = 100%)

detached bungalow price by region Q1 2003 to Q2 2011 (re-based Q1 2003 = 100%)

detached house price by region Q1 2003 to Q2 2011 (re-based Q1 2003 = 100%)

semi-detached house price by region Q1 2003 to Q2 2011 (re-based Q1 2003 = 100%)

terrace house price by region Q1 2003 to Q2 2011 (re-based Q1 2003 = 100%)

Updates being added to pinned thread.

All house price by region Q1 2003 to Q2 2011 (re-based Q1 2003 = 100%)

What a gravy train at public expense. Damming indictment of politics and public sector incompetence. I am disgusted with the waste of public funds as if it doesn't matter. Government in this county is simply too big, too many fat cats on large salaries adding very little value.

Maybe they are only talking about those homeowners who have a mortgage.

Did prices go up 50%? a 50% rise followed by a 50% fall = an overall 25% drop from the start price (use some real numbers to check)

Thanks, I read through that and other interesting series of anaIysis posted by Free Trader. I think the general feeling on the Northern Ireland forum is that transaction levels have been so low over the past year or more here, that local HPIs from the Halifax and Nationwide, which don't have a large market share of the local mortgage business to start with, needed to be treated with caution particularly over Q/Q, given the small sample size that the data must have been compiled from. But I havn't been able to source any regional data on mortage business by lender to quantify this. I did some comparison work a while back between the main indicies in NI and when sample sizes had been much larger before the crash in Q2 2007, there was quite a remarkable degree of consistency, particularly when the DCLG index was regressed by one quarter to reflect the later point in the selling process from which it dates its data.

up 2.8% (seasonally adjusted) on Q1 2011 for all houses all buyers down 9.8% (non-seasonally adjusted) on Q1 2011 for all houses all buyers down 16.3% on Q1 2011 for all FTBer houses down 7.2% for Former Owner Occupiers link from here http://www.lloydsbankinggroup.com/media1/economic_insight/halifax_house_price_index_page.asp The Halifax data seems to have been more volatile than the other main indicies for some time, so caution perhaps needed in interpreting the data. Could speculate however that developers have had to reduce the price of new build FTBer homes in a difficult spring market. Any anecdotal evidence of that?

Sounds like a good plan.

This a good site for getting a whole range of relevant socio-economic statistics for a particular area and you can drill down to quite specific locations. Just type in a post code like BT4 or BT5 and that will get you started. http://www.ninis.nisra.gov.uk/

I think average UK price is now a very meaningless statistic in the distinct 2 tier market that exists in the UK between the London/south east area and everywhere else. To illustrate the point, I've used the Nationwide data (amalgamating for simplification the 10 English areas into 3 larger regions - Greater London, North England and South England) to show that the disparity in the 2 tier market is now so wide that Greater London has been the only region to be above the average for some time. Therefore the relative change in the position of the other regions to the average is mostly because the Greater London area simply drags it upwards from them as it becomes ever more distinct in terms of pricing from the rest of the UK. Thus in 1973, Northern Ireland was 10% below average and is now 26% below, but Wales was 5% below and is now 16% below, Scotland 4% below and now 16% below, North England 14% below and now 21% below and even South England was 3% below and is still 4% below the average UK price. (Greater London was 21% above average and is now a massive 48% above the average.) So average has little real value for statistical comparison purposes within a data set that doesn't have some semblance of a normal distribution. A fuller analysis would take this a stage further and also look at affordability (generally and not just FTBer). The ASHE site just has data going back to 1999 but it least it gives us a chance to look at what's happened over the last decade or so. What it tells us is that relative to earnings and despite the crash, housing in Northern Ireland still costs more than it does in Scotland and North England and is some 47% more expensive relative to earnings than it was in 1999. Interestingly, housing in Wales is now more expensive in relative terms to Northern Ireland due to both a proportionately larger increase in prices being coupled with a smaller increase in earnings over the period. (I tried to articulate this point a few nights ago but a bottle of Rioja impaired my calculations to the point where I couldn't replicate them the following morning and so I had to withdraw them. But no red wine tonight - well not yet.)

Work right back through the reason why the banks are insisting on that deposit in the first place. The story was a little patronising but at least you got to the right conclusion all on your own in the end. Sometimes when you are deep in the forest you just can't see the wood for the trees.

You should be asking yourself why to VIs consistently say that the problems and solutions to the stagnant housing market are something other than pricing.

At the bottom of the last 2 cycles, FTBer average prices fell to about 2.5 to 2.7 times adult gross mean earnings in the UK. In NI we didn't really have a bubble because we were too busy killing each other. Then we stopped killing each other and began building illusionary wealth by selling each other houses for others to live in at ever increasing prices just like everyone else was doing, encouraged and facilitated by VIs in the property porn industry. Then the world ran out of money to keep paying the ever higher prices and the VIs started blaming each other for the whole mess when the bubble burst. So forget the peak as a reference point for making value judgements on the worth of houses today and how far to we reach the bottom, it was a brief period of madness when very few houses actually got sold at that level. It only a measure of the level of hysteria that existed for a short time. Look instead at longer term trends and cycles and for periods when there was more stability, they tend to repeat themselves (but the VIs will probably suggest to you that it's different this time). At the minute in Northern Ireland average prices are at 3.7 times earnings and if you don't think it's going to be different this time and that the cycle will repeat itself, then average houses prices have would have to fall here by another 25-30% before we would reach the bottom. That may seem unbelievable but we bought at times when FTBer house/ income ratios were at 2.6 (1983), 2.2 (1987), 1.7 (1991) and 2.0 (1994) before selling up at 8.1 (2007). If you feel you have to 'stretch' then maybe you should be thinking that we're nowhere near the bottom yet, but you can probably be fairly confident that the bottom of the housing market will reach the bottom of the cycle first. But always the best advice is do your own research.

It seems we are coming at this from different directions. I'm mainly interested in price levels and reaching a bottom in the cycle. But there's plenty of others on here who can give you advice about FTBer mortgages etc if your are thinking of taking the plunge.

Nationwide use 'mean' gross earnings which from recollection is higher than the 'median' but as I said in an earlier post affordability is assessed with reference to single adult mean gross earnings in the relevant area and not on household income and a judgement as to whether there may or may not be a partner who may or may not be earning.

This is a frequently quoted source http://www.statistics.gov.uk/statbase/Product.asp?vlnk=1951

Edit: my previous comment posted twice in error

From Nationwide site, in relation to FTBer affordability ratios ● Calculated as the ratio of Nationwide FTB house price to mean gross earnings in each region ● Earnings data is from the ONS Annual Survey of Hours & Earnings, and pre-1998 the New Earnings Survey; NES data has been adjusted to create a consistent series ● Mean earnings for a full time worker on adult rates are used ● Quarterly earnings data calculated using straight line interpolation; points after last annual observation extrapolated using average growth rates and hence subject to revision You seem to be using household income (and assuming 2 earners) and then using a relatively modest multiplier of 3.5 to rationalise that £140k is 'well within the range' for a FTBer when this actually equates to 6-7 times mean gross earnings using the Nationwide affordability criteria. Is that what you mean?