Jackanory stories

thesaint

lypsey wrote:

I will spell it out for you (it is a lot worse than i thought) . I have checked the monthly Rightmove figures. They are in London as follows
October up 2.1%
November up 2.8%
December up 2.9 %
Total 7.8%

Doozer therefore those micky mouse figures produced by Rightmove are according to the LR - completely and utterly fictional. There are many many people making MASSIVE financial decisions on Rightmove figures (and halifax , Nationwide etc) and as you can now hopefully see that is why I am very upset
If this market crashes as I suspect it will they should be prosecuted by someone for completely misleading figures
I wonder wether anyone reading this has a background in law and can tell me wether this might be possible

I admit that I know nothing about house prices and how they are made up, but aren't the rises mentioned above meant to mean October up 2.1% on September's price, November up 2.8% on October etc?

You can't add the totals together (7.8%). If i'm wrong, please be gentle:o

aderbyshirelad

RHemmings wrote:

Rightmove has asking prices, Haliwide has mortgage figures. LR has the actual sale prices.

None of the indexes are perfect, as some properties don't seem to make it onto the LR, and the prices for many newbuild properties are inflated by cashback schemes and other inducements.

Normally you'd expect the various measures of how the market is performing to track each other quite closely. If the figures are as far apart as quoted, then something is certainly up. I don't claim to know what that something is.

At last, (some) clarity. You beat me to it in pointing out to the manical lypsey that the rightmove figures are asking, not sold, prices.

Trying to compare these figures is practically pointless. And I don't think you can expect these various measures of how the market is performing to track one another closely at all as they're not measuring the same thing. Statistics are wonderful / dangerous things.

aderbyshirelad

thesaint wrote:

I admit that I know nothing about house prices and how they are made up, but aren't the rises mentioned above meant to mean October up 2.1% on September's price, November up 2.8% on October etc?

You can't add the totals together (7.8%). If i'm wrong, please be gentle:o

Congratulations on your bravery thesaint, I thought the same thing about the 7.8% figure but was afraid to be shown-up (maths never was my strong point) - I'll stand or fall with you now.

So guys, is the 7.8% quoted correctly?

lypsey

aderbyshirelad
Are you out of your mind

Of course they should track each other (ok within a narrow band). These figures are showing 7.8% up and 2.6% down . Can I have a pint of what your drinking

To thesaint my maths is not good either , sorry but I think the following

If you have 100 pounds and it goes up 2.1% it is now 102.1
If you then have the next month up 2.8 that actually is 104.95
and so on ...

I stand to be corrected but it looks like it might be more than I suggested because it is compounded

Doozergirl

You're not spelling it out at all!

You've given me Q4 asking prices from Rightmove which will equate with maybe Q1-Q2 figures from the LR but still not directly. The figures you have quoted also don't even compare Q4 to Q3 or year on year.

I'm happy to be shown, but you're not showing me anything so I'm bored now.

RHemmings

aderbyshirelad wrote:

At last, (some) clarity. You beat me to it in pointing out to the manical lypsey that the rightmove figures are asking, not sold, prices.

Trying to compare these figures is practically pointless. And I don't think you can expect these various measures of how the market is performing to track one another closely at all as they're not measuring the same thing. Statistics are wonderful / dangerous things.

I've seen some charts showing the nationwide and halifax indices and house prices. They tracked each other quite closely until quite recently when the suddenly diverged.

I think it's rather extreme to say that the figures shouldn't be expected to track each other closely, as they are all derivative statistics of the price of a house. While they would be different, as sale prices are usually less than asking prices, it would be unusual for one to go up while the other goes down. And certainly press releases by Rightmove claim that their statistics say something about the prices of property in the UK.

There is an editorial on "House Price Indicies" in the January issue of the Journal of the Royal Statistical Society, Series A. I don't have immediate access to it. Does anyone?

aderbyshirelad

lypsey wrote:

aderbyshirelad
Are you out of your mind

Of course they should track each other (ok within a narrow band). These figures are showing 7.8% up and 2.6% down . Can I have a pint of what your drinking

To thesaint my maths is not good either , sorry but I think the following

If you have 100 pounds and it goes up 2.1% it is now 102.1
If you then have the next month up 2.8 that actually is 104.95
and so on ...

I stand to be corrected but it looks like it might be more than I suggested because it is compounded

:rotfl: :rotfl: :rotfl: :rotfl: :rotfl: :rotfl: :rotfl: :rotfl: :rotfl: :rotfl: :rotfl: :rotfl:Thanks lypsey, you've just cheered me up no end. Am I out of my mind? Do you actually ever read what you post :rolleyes:

What useful correlation would you expect to see between asking prices from estate agents and sold prices regitered by the LR?

Do you really not understand that your astonishment at the figures being apparently so unreconsilible is in fact the only astonishing thing in your whole post!!!!!!

sm9ai

To be honest they are all probably correct.

Halifax is just from a far smaller sample so they do not represent as much of the market.

So the Land Registry is correct - House prices fell 1.8%. Shame the bbc doesn't report it, but then again when have they ever?

aderbyshirelad

RHemmings wrote:

I've seen some charts showing the nationwide and halifax indices and house prices. They tracked each other quite closely until quite recently when the suddenly diverged.

I think it's rather extreme to say that the figures shouldn't be expected to track each other closely, as they are all derivative statistics of the price of a house. While they would be different, as sale prices are usually less than asking prices, it would be unusual for one to go up while the other goes down. And certainly press releases by Rightmove claim that their statistics say something about the prices of property in the UK.

There is an editorial on "House Price Indicies" in the January issue of the Journal of the Royal Statistical Society, Series A. I don't have immediate access to it. Does anyone?

Ok RH, point taken, I was being rather extreme. Damn, this always happens when I start reading lypsey's posts as they so rile me.

You are right that there should clearly be some correlation between these figures.

However, how do you (or anyone else - that wasn't a challenge) then explain the recent divergence in the nationwide and halifax figures you quote, as these, I presume, are based on asking prices on a nationwide basis over the same period?

nobblyned

The explanation for the falling LR figures is reasonably simple - they aren't seasonally adjusted.

If you compare Q4 2005 with Q3 2005, or Q4 2004 with Q3 2004 etc, you will see that there is always a fall between the two quarters' numbers.

Because of the non-adjusted numbers the only fair comparison is between Q4 2005 to Q4 2006 which is the year on year number that the LR quotes in the report.

In fact if you look at the numbers you will see that the Q3 - Q4 fall this year was actually less than last year (2.6% vs 2.9%).

But don't let the facts stand in the way of a good 'house price crash' thread!