The launch of a new monthly house price survey is being planned by the government and should hopefully be available by the end of this year or early next year.
Gavin McGuire, a spokesman for the Office of the Deputy Prime Minister which is responsible for housing, said the survey would provide the market with a wide range of information. He added that it is difficult for both the press and the public to understand what is going on from day to day. The housing market seems to fluctuate aggressively and there is no consistency.
The current survey is available quarterly but the proposed survey will be launched on the web. The Council of Mortgage Lenders and the Land Registry Department will be involved in providing figures for the survey. The Office of the Deputy Prime Minister will be working closely with Halifax, which said recently that there had been a cooling of house prices in August 2002. However, Nationwide announced that house prices had increased by 2.5%.