House Price Index
The UK House Price Index is the official monthly measure of house price change, produced by HM Land Registry and the ONS from registered sales.
The UK House Price Index is the official measure of house prices across the UK. It is published every month and shows how prices are changing in each country, region and local authority.
It is produced jointly by HM Land Registry, the Office for National Statistics, Registers of Scotland and Land and Property Services Northern Ireland. In England and Wales it is built from the same registered sales as Price Paid Data.
How it is calculated
The index does not take a simple average price or median price. It uses a statistical model that takes account of each home's type, size and location. This is called mix-adjusted. It stops the figure rising or falling just because more large houses or more flats happened to sell in a month.
The index is set to 100 in a base month, currently January 2023, and each month's figure shows how prices compare with that point. It also publishes an average price for each area, worked out from the same model.
What it covers
Figures are published for the UK, England, Wales, the English regions, counties, local authorities and London boroughs. They are not published for postcode districts or streets.
The index includes cash and mortgage sales and splits them by new build and existing homes, and by first-time buyers and former owner-occupiers. In England and Wales it leaves out sales where the buyer or seller is a company, which Price Paid Data records as additional price paid data.
The headline figures are not seasonally adjusted. Seasonally adjusted series are published for regions and above.
Timing and revisions
Each release covers a month that ended some weeks earlier, because sales take time to be registered. The first estimate for a month is based on part of the sales that will eventually be counted, so recent months are revised for up to a year as more sales come in.
Our guide on why sold prices take months to appear explains the registration delay that sits behind this.
Using it with local figures
The index is a useful check on a local figure. If a postcode district's median has risen much faster than its local authority's index, look at the number of sales and the mix of homes sold before drawing a conclusion. Working out house price change shows how.
| Produced by | HM Land Registry, ONS, Registers of Scotland, LPS Northern Ireland |
| Published | Monthly |
| Smallest area | Local authority |
| Method | Mix-adjusted (hedonic regression) |
| Base | January 2023 = 100 |
Related terms
Mix-adjusted · Seasonally adjusted · Average price · Median price · Price Paid Data