From 24th October, we’re replacing the Hometrack House Price Survey with the new UK House Price City Index, tracking house prices across 20 UK cities, plus regions.

Why the change?

The Monthly National Housing Survey is based on the answers to 11 questions we have been asking agents and surveyors for the last 14 years. When we started in 2000, data on the housing market and the underlying trends was hard to obtain and since then we have collected data from over 3.5m agents.

The changing availability of market data means it is possible to analyse trends based on real data rather than surveys and, perhaps more importantly, drill this data down to a more localised level. This approach of using data and insight to deliver answers to help businesses make better decisions is what Hometrack does day to day in the UK, Australia and Europe.

What is the UK House Price City Index?

Hometrack has been producing localised house price indices for the last 12 years based on recorded sales and mortgage valuations. These localized indices are a key component of our automated valuation model which is used by four of the top 5 lenders in the UK. This series of highly granular indices has remained proprietary to Hometrack and unpublished to date.

We’ve now decided to publish a set of indices using the same underlying data and methodology for 20 UK Cities. Alongside these City series we will be making available monthly house price indices for the UK, English Government Regions, Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland via our website.

Hometrack’s Monthly UK House Price City Index will offer a detailed yet digestible analysis on monthly changes in house prices for 20 key cities across the UK enabling a narrative and discussion on the market at a sub-regional level. Cities are the focus of economic and demographic change in the UK and globally. The recent independence debate in Scotland and its impact on Government means greater focus on cities and city regions as a policy base. Cities create platform analysis of other important metrics such as housing affordability, new supply and the rental market.

What makes it unique?

The Hometrack UK City House Price Indices are unique in that:

• They are the only monthly City level series in the UK
• They enable a more granular analysis of price trends in localised markets that contain 45% of the value of UK housing and a third of the homes.
• Cities are the focus for economic and demographic change in the UK in the future. 
• Hometrack’s index series is benchmarked to the market so its accuracy is tracked over time.