Firm pattern of recovery in Australia's housing markets, just as RP Data-Rismark data showed: Tim Lawless

With the other major index providers now releasing their September quarter data, we can start to see a firm pattern of recovery emerging in Australia’s housing markets.  The ABS released its stratified median series on the 6^th of November showing a 0.3% rise in capital city house values over the September quarter, following a 0.6% increase in prices over the June quarter.   Similarly, APM showed a flat September quarter (0%) after reporting a 0.4% rise over the June quarter.  Closer to home, the RP Data-Rismark results showed house values were actually down over the June quarter by -1.4% and up 2.2% over the September quarter.

The flow of data brings to mind how, a few months ago, there was some commotion from a particular housing market commentator who presented a strongly worded case that the RP Data-Rismark Indices were unreliable and inaccurate.   It turns out, that was much kerfuffle about nothing.

Being the earliest reporter on housing market conditions (the RP Data-Rismark series are published one day in arrears, unlike the ABS, which took 37 days to publish its September results), it is easy to become a target when reporting on a change in market conditions.

At the time, of course, we vigorously defended our methodologies, pointed to our online white papers, highlighted the due diligence and independent auditing of our data and infrastructure and the peer review of the index construction.   We went into detail about our rate of data collection and attribute coverage.  We even put out an update onhis website addressing some of the misconceptions.

An extract of the assertions from one of the media articles is below (taken from Australian Broker online).