A consultation has been launched on the development of a single definitive house price index.
It comes four years after official recognition that different surveys are sending out contradictory messages.
A single new UK-wide index, likely to be launched in 2016, would replace both the Land Registry and ONS monthly surveys.
The ONS is currently showing house prices some £80,000 more expensive than the Land Registry.
The new single index would also replace monthly and quarterly surveys produced in Scotland and Northern Ireland.
In 2010, the National Statistician’s Review of House Price Statistics recommended that a single definitive house price index should be produced.
The Office for National Statistics is conducting the consultation – which runs until December 12 – in partnership with the Land Registry, which covers England and Wales, Registers of Scotland, and Land & Property Services, Northern Ireland.
A working group has been meeting to investigate how a single definitive index might be produced.
Proposals include measuring house prices at completion of sale; measuring both house prices and house price inflation; doing so at least monthly; and offering figures as both “seasonally adjusted” and “unadjusted”.
The new index would not produce valuations of all housing stock, only properties sold at full market value.
The index would include owner-occupation and buy-to-let purchases as well as repossessions, but would exclude remortgages and purchases by sitting tenants.
Views are being asked in an online questionnaire, and there will be a summary of comments published 12 weeks after the consultation closes.
Sounds sensible… what's the catch?
I suppose that bonfire of quangos might happen in the run up to the election…finally.
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