HOUSEprices
house prices. For agents involved in selling newbuild, there’s another specialised index that might be relevant – Knight Frank’s development land index. Unsurprisingly perhaps, the latest release showed London land prices rising by 20.3 per cent in 2011, while across the UK as a whole land prices were only just better than flat.
ADDING IT ALL UP
You may not have been counting, but the total so far is 12 indices and surveys, tracking house prices could, if you’re not careful, become a full time job. That’s where the Chesterton Humberts Poll of Polls comes in. It aggregates all the major national house price and asking price indicators. Where it’s particularly clever is in the
If you don’t keep up to date, you’ll be putting yourself at a disadvantage.’
way it weights them according to how accurate they have been in the past, as well as a number of other criteria. It then adjusts the data it has to reflect the housing stock as a whole, rather than just those properties sold in the month. With this index, we come full circle, because it summarises the differences between the different indices included in the Poll of Polls. The January release showed that the other indices couldn’t even make up their minds whether the market was growing or slowing. Hometrack and the Land Registry said the market was flat; Nationwide said it was down 0.2 per cent,
Home.co.uk thought it was down 0.3 per cent, and DCLG said it was down 0.1 per cent. But then the Halifax not only thought it was up, but very substantially up, with a 0.6 per cent rise. (One clue to the difference is that not all the latest releases referred to the same calendar month, but both Halifax and Nationwide were stating figures for January, so that’s nearly a whole per cent difference between the two of them.) There is no single figure that ‘works’. But if I had to pick one or two most important polls to follow, the Poll of Polls would certainly be one, because it gives a good feel for the other major polls, and the commentary is well written and insightful. I’d also want to follow RICS, because it is a good lead indicator, and because of the useful information on the balance of buyers and sellers and the level of sales and inventory per branch. And I think I would keep a very close eye on the IPD figures. If
the big investing institutions come into the housing market, yields and returns will become increasingly important, and if you don’t keep up to date, you’ll be putting yourself at a disadvantage.
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PROPERTYdrum JUNE 2012 43
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