Following its designation as a National Statistic, the ONS/Land Registry UK House Price Index (UK HPI) is our preferred measure of house price inflation.
We prefer UK HPI to other measures because it has a much larger sample size, and tends to be less volatile (Chart A). It is also granular enough to provide reliable disaggregation by region and purchase-type.
The UK House Price Index is the most stable measure of house prices
But since the UK HPI is based on transactions data it lags other measures of house prices and is also subject to revision (though those revisions have become smaller and less biased recently, (Chart B)).
Revisions to the UK House Price Index have become smaller and less biased
To overcome the longer lag with which UK HPI data are produced, we have developed a nowcasting and nearcasting toolkit for house price inflation to provide us with an estimate of the UK HPI for the current quarter and the quarter ahead.
This employs similar techniques to those used in our GDP nowcast, and draws on data from other measures of house prices including those from Rightmove, Halifax, Nationwide and the RICS Residential Market Survey.
This post has been prepared with the help of Hasdeep Sethi.
This analysis was presented to the MPC as part of its November 2018 round.
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