Lies, Damn Lies And National Housing Statistics. What An ‘average House Price’ Can Tell You About Yo

By Author: nguyenvanvinh vinh
Total Articles: 3
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(@PropertyExpert1 on Twitter) director of award-winning Romans estate agents in Reading said recently “Good estate agents & homeowners need to base their figures & market trends on what’s happening on their own doorsteps or their postcode as a barometer as to what the property market is doing in their specific town or village. It’s all about micro-markets & breaking the statistics down to get a true picture of the market.” Living legend and Chartered Surveyor Michael Day (@Integraps) weighed into the debate: “Big picture fine” he said “but so much concentration, small sample sizes & lazy journalism on national stats, can mislead” and he’s right. It’s very easy for hacks working on national titles and broadcasters to generalise. The groan that greets the Channel 4 national weather forecast reminds us how hopeless it is if all you really want to know is if you need to pack a brolly in Norwich tomorrow.

However, it isn’t easy in three minutes or in just a few paragraphs to summarise the property market when your audience is spread across 24 million homes and four countries. If you want ...
... local news, get a local paper. If you want the local weather watch Look North! But it turns out that national trends can be surprisingly useful at a local level - even if it is only to help you judge the success or failure of your own local market. Yet still D’Espagnac persists; “National statistics are of no use to the homeowner in the North East nor in London or the Thames Valley”. he says but I'm not sure he's being fair.

Using the latest numbers supplied by The Land Registry which are accessible to all courtesy of the excellent tools that rightmove.co.uk provide free in their ‘House Prices’ section, it’s possible to see how many homes have been offered for sale each month in any given area. You can see at a glance how many new properties have been added AND you can see the number sold. These figures will allow you to calculate the chances of selling your home in the next month and the proportion of properties that sells every year.

Nationally I calculate that if you put your home on the market today you have an 11.5% chance of selling it in the first four weeks. Leave it on the market for a year and this rises to about 44% of all homes that offered for sale eventually selling. The fact that most don’t sell comes as a surprise to some but it shouldn’t. Many sellers only chose to go to market because they’ve found another home they prefer and, if they are unable to make that purchase for whatever reason, they withdraw the property. Some will only sell if they get 'their' price which in a challenging market isn’t always easy. But how much help is this ‘national’ statistic of 44%?
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