The Office for National Statistics has published early estimates for England and Wales for its new single official UK House Price Index, which will be available in full from June.
Developed jointly with other official producers of house price statistics following a review by the National Statistician, the ONS list uses data from bodies including the Land Registry and Council of Mortgage Lenders.
By bringing these datasets together, and using internationally agreed methods, the ONS said the new index will give the most detailed picture of the UK housing market.
For the most recent period published (December 2011) it shows an average price level of £185,000 for England and Wales.
This is lower than the price recorded by the current ONS index for England (£222,000) for the same period, but still above the equivalent price levels recorded by the Land Registry for England and Wales (£157,000), the Halifax for the UK (£157,000) and Nationwide for the UK (£163,000).
The main reason for the decrease in price levels is the use of the geometric mean, which reduces the impact of very high value properties on the headline data.
Over the period 2003-2011, which is the longest comparable period available, the average annual growth is 5.2 per cent for the ONS index for England, 4.6 per cent for the Land Registry for England and Wales, 4.7 per cent for the Halifax for the UK, 5.3 per cent for Nationwide for the UK and 6.1 per cent for the new index for England and Wales.
ONS statistician Chris Jenkins said: “For the first time, consistent high quality data will be available for both national and local areas, helping policy makers to make better decisions.”
Consultation on the development of the single index began back in 2014, noting that the ONS and Land Registry already publish statistics, along with separate registers in Scotland and Northern Ireland.
“These various measures can sometimes lead to contradictory messages for users who are unfamiliar with the differences in methodology and scope of each measure,” read the review.
“This in turn can make decision making difficult based on the house price data available.”
Meanwhile, the latest Land Registry house price index for February showed an annual price increase of 6.1 per cent, taking the average property value in England and Wales to £190,275.
Monthly house prices were down 0.2 per cent since January.
Jeremy Leaf, a former RICS chairman and north London estate agent, said the declining number of property transactions continues to be a worry, with a 6 per cent fall in completions in December compared with the previous year.
“House prices rose again in the year to March but perhaps not by as much as we expected. This suggests that they could go higher still in the next few months as that extra flurry of transactions filters through into the Land Registry’s historic data, before they start to soften.”
peter.walker@ft.com
