Hungary - House Price Index

The National Bank of Hungary (MNB) reports house price indices by NUTS 2 and special areas, in real or nominal terms. Quarterly from 1990 (national) or 2001 (subnational).

• Measurements:
  • Fixed-base nominal index relative to 2001Q1 (Index 2001Q1=100)
  • Real index (Vol. Index 2001Q1=100)
• Adjustment: Not seasonally adjusted (NSA)
• Native frequency: Quarterly
• Start dates:
  • 1990Q1 national
  • 2001Q1 subnational
• Geo coverage:
  • Country
  • All NUTS 2 areas (8x IHUN_^^)
  • Geo composites:
    • IHUN_SMUN = all municipalities
    • IHUN_SCIT = all cities

The source writes:

The index reported by MNB is considered to be a novelty among statistics on the Hungarian housing market because data starts at 1990, making it the longest housing time series. Starting in 2001, the index is also is able to capture HPI by region.

Changes in house prices are measured using transaction data evolved during the sales and purchases of properties. MNB's HPI data is based on property acquisition duty data (transfer of residential properties) collected by the National Tax and Customs Administration (NTCA). 

House prices are not only determined by current supply and demand conditions, but by the characteristics and location of the property. Data collected from NTCA includes the sale price, the property's net internal area (NIA), location of the property, and the type of property. After 2008, information on whether the property is newly built or not is also available.

Data has been collected by the NTCA since January 1990, but since has had significant changes made to the quality and structure of the data. Before 2008, it was unknown whter the person liable for the duty payment was a private indivdual or an organization. It was also unknown if the property was sold new or used. Prior to 2008, the type of property only included a detatched house or flat.  

Aggregated real HPI is deflated by the consumer price index. The source of CPI values between 1990 and 1992 is the OECD.

City data: Indices for the cities is weighted by region while chaining the quarterly prices changes adding up the index values.

The weights of the quarterly price changes uses the number of observations of the regresion estimates. The database used to estimate the house price index for the whole country does not contain any observations from Budapest.

Moody's Analytics supplements

For the value indexes, we produce seasonally adjusted counterparts using the U.S. Census Bureau's X-13 ARIMA program.

Data is published quarterly after the fourth month following the reference quarter. When the indices are calculated for a given period, around 50-70 percent of the transactions have been processed. After one year, all transactions are processed. As a result, the last three quarters are subject to revision upon each publication.

Further reading

At the source:

• Source methodology (pdf)