No – I’m aware of the limitations of the data. But a bigger problem is taking hard data (like the sale price of a single property 12 months ago) and then trying to come up with a “valuation” of that property today. A valuer can put a whole pile of variables into the mix and come up with a number – but is by no means assured that the number he comes up with is what the property will sell for given there is actually a willing buyer and seller. Indeed most valuers will not give an absolute value – they will give a range.
The other problem we have is the number of housing stock that turns over within in a 12 month period. As a nation we don’t turn our properties over every 12 months so it is near on impossible to come up with those sorts of comparisons. And it would be a long bow to draw to say, where there are examples of a single property tuning over in 12 months, that this could be extrapolated to the whole market.
A final problem we have is that we don’t have the whole data set. I don’t know where the properties were selling in say $5k bands so I can’t make comparisons of say sales in the $300 - $305k band. If someone has that data and can add to the thread then that would be great. Other wise we are talking around figures we simply don’t have.
I guess my main point is that in times of a declining market the doom gloom people have been happy to point to the QV and REINZ data to support their position. If that’s the case they should be able to use the same data and come up with a view. Except they are not because the data isn’t telling them the story they want to tell. And lets not forget in the boom times it was the QV and REINZ data that people looked at to tell stories of a fantastic property market.