Can we take the Nationwide seriously?

InkZ

All the figures are different and to get an accurate picture, you need to take all the available info from different sources and base a view upon that.

The main thing to remember is that as a buyer, all you care about is your area so national figures are irrelevant to a degree. London figures will be propping up the north and Nationwide is bias to the South.

Rightmove has some great data under the house prices section which is worth a look and you can run on your postcode.

Those quotes above will also be bias and will only be relevant to their sector / area.

julieq

macaque wrote: »

If housing market takes a tumble, the Nationwide will be up to their eyebrows in bad debt. Therefore I don't agree with your comments about their neutrality on the bear/bull issue
....

If you honestly believe that the Nationwide don't have the motivation or means to put a positive spin on the numbers I think you are kidding yourself.

But the LR don't run any risks of bad debt and within a % or so the numbers are the same. You're off in to nutty conspiracy land Macaque, for the following reasons:

1) The numbers have been much lower than they are now from the NW, so they were running the risk of bad debt then. Nothing bad happened.
2) Bad debt is priced into interest rates, and price falls do not create bad debt anyway, bad debt is created by defaults not price falls.
3) There is plenty of equity in the housing market anyway.
4) Default rates on mortgages are low and were low before the crisis. There is no significantly increased risk even at lower price levels
5) The risk of bad debt increases if the market is talked up unsustainably, because you create a false market. NW actually risks creating bad debt by spinning things positively, it's better to report lower.
6) Occams razor says that the most obvious explanation is that the NW are just reporting their numbers. You may not like the YoY increase (which is because of a lower than LR report last year), but it's what it is.

To be honest, I've seen HPC this morning and there's a lot of people talking themselves up into conspiracist frenzies there. But these are just one months figures, volatile because of low transaction levels and without filtering on the YoY number. Get over it. The market is stagnant and the LR correlates with the NW.

StevieJ

julieq wrote: »

I don't see why you'd lose confidence in either set of numbers as they're basically the same. The Halifax is the one looking dubious if anything. You'd certainly want to insist your buyer had a nationwide mortgage on this evidence...

I thought the Nationwide was biased to the South and Halifax North which would explain any discrepencies.

Dan:_4

Can we take the Nationwide seriously? Only when the monthly data is negative.

nembot

can we take Nationwide figures seriously

Only if we have a huge mortgage and see our home as an investment rather than somewhere to live, or have a small portfolio of BTL's, or a small wotsit...

The big picture says it all, NW's 10% bring little to the empty table.

geneer

julieq wrote: »

The YoY disparity is pretty obviously because the Nationwide was showing lower than the LR a year ago.

:rotfl::rotfl::rotfl:Thanks for that insight Mr Hawkings.

julieq wrote: »

The prices correlate very closely between the two indices, but NW is obviously going to be more volatile because of lower included transactions.

Which would make the land reg more accurate right?

Because the land reg shows prices at a -3.2% YOY fall.
Whilst nationwide has reported no higher than -1.3 at any point in the last year.

One of them is bobbins.
Take a guess which.

RenovationMan

nembot wrote: »

Only if we have a huge mortgage and see our home as an investment rather than somewhere to live, or have a small portfolio of BTL's, or a small wotsit...

Even then, only if we are looking to sell up within the next 10 years. To those who aren't the current period is a never to be repeated chance to blitz their mortgages and get ahead of the game.

geneer

RenovationMan wrote: »

Even then, only if we are looking to sell up within the next 10 years. To those who aren't the current period is a never to be repeated chance to blitz their mortgages and get ahead of the game.

Hate to break it to you RM but it is quite possible to "overpay" into your savings account innit.

julieq

Erm, Geneer, you don't understand this do you?

YoY figures are the difference between this month's figures and a year ago.

A year ago the NW was showing below the LR by something like 1.5%. It's now above where it was so showing a YoY increase, but it's a pair of spot readings so you get an amplification of noise.

The LR is the other way round (but is a lagging indicator and in fact correlates quite closely with the NW to within 1.5% or so).

There is no reason at all why the idea of a -3.2% YoY fall in the LR would mean that there should be any particular maximum or minumum YoY value throughout the year for the NW. In fact those are independent measurements and have nothing to do with this month's YoY.

The basic problem here is that you don't understand how the numbers work. Your article did explain it reasonably well - as it said you need to look at all indices. So really you need to read that and then understand why spot YoY measurements can fluctuate due to noise in the measurements. To be fair, I think the other bears understand that, it really is just you who hasn't quite twigged yet.

Certainly it doesn't mean that either the NW or LR is "bobbins". Neither should it as they're showing the same absolute numbers basically.

julieq

By the way, it doesn't mean the LR is more accurate. Both sets of measurements are accurate in that they accurately reflect the measurement methodology. The LR numbers are damped because of more averaging, that means they take time to get to the final value (long time constant filter). Volatile measurements are more accurate but subject to noise effects.

Look at all indices and cross correlate. Very simple.