A More Timely House Price Index

House Price Index Methodologies

Index Revision, House Price Risk, and the Market for House Price Derivatives

It is widely recognized that options and futures markets for housing can reduce and manage the risks inherent in consumers’ large investments in housing equity. The integrity of such markets depends, however, upon the use of transparent and replicable benchmarks for house prices and settlement values. In the USA, a series of state and metropolitan indexes have been produced by a government agen...

Evaluating a House Price Index Based on the Sale Price Appraisal Ratio (spar) Method

This paper contributes to the literature on the sale price appraisal ratio (SPAR) as an alternative house price index methodology. Housing market transaction data for 12 cities or districts in New Zealand for the period 1994 – 2004 is utilised to test the effect of measurement errors in assessed values on index accuracy and temporal aggregation on index stability. The main findings are: 1) temp...

Understanding House-Price Dynamics

*The views expressed here are those of the author and do not necessarily represent the views of the Federal Reserve Bank of Philadelphia or the Federal Reserve System. or most homeowners, housing is the single most important component of their nonpension wealth. Therefore, a change in house prices greatly affects the total wealth of many households. Furthermore, movements in house prices can af...

A Guide to Aggregate House Price Measures

In recent years, the United States, like many other industrialized nations, has experienced wide swings in the growth rate of housing prices. Understanding these price changes is important for a number of reasons. Housing serves as a major source of individual wealth. Hence, changes in its value may influence consumer spending and saving decisions, in turn, affecting overall economic activity. ...