Issues in measuring a monthly house price index in New Zealand

The sale price appraisal ratio (SPAR) method, which takes the ratios of the current house prices and their previous assessed values to construct an index, has been applied in New Zealand since the 1960s. This paper uses housing market transaction data for 12 cities in New Zealand (1994-2004) to develop monthly SPAR house price indices. These indices were subjected to a variety of statistical tests and benchmarked against the comparable monthly quality controlled weighted repeat sales indices. Finally, the paper provides some useful suggestions for future research based on the SPAR index and other alternative house price indices, such as the assessed value (AV) method.