House Price Surveys
Britain is a nation of homeowners with more than two thirds of the population owning their own home. Given that home ownership is likely to be most people's biggest asset, (followed by the value of their pension ), there has, in the last 50 years, been intense interest in house price values.
Mortgage banks such as the Halifax, together with major building society the Nationwide, produce monthly house price statistics.
Other regular sources of information on the state of the housing market include property websites Hometrack and Rightmove, as well as trade body - the Royal Institution of Chartered Surveyors (RICS), which all produce monthly summaries on the state of the mortgage market.
HM Land Registry and the ODPM (Office of the Deputy Prime Minister) also publish figures showing the amount of activity in the housing market while organisations such as the Building Societies Association (BSA) and the British Bankers Association (BBA) produce monthly figures showing the amount of money they are lending in mortgages.
The study from the Halifax is the longest established and taken as the benchmark by many professionals. However, like rival surveys, the 'Halifax monthly house price index' , as it's known, has its limitations. Only a sample of housing transactions are being included in the count and only transactions through estate agents are considered. Where there is a low level of activity in the market, any rise/fall in prices may be magnified and will not necessarily be an accurate guide to prices overall. The varying house price surveys often disagree with one another because although they purport to measure the same thing, they do so in different ways.
Do remember, with the exception of the Land Registry and the ODPM, most of the organisations that publish housing market data have a vested interest in having a market that is as buoyant as possible!