House price, rents and affordability

This project has six main themes all related to different aspects of the Northern Ireland housing market. The first concerns analysing the performance of the private housing market based on sale prices achieved. The key data requirements are price type, age, size, location and other property characteristics. Output is in the form of a quarterly report, The Northern Ireland Quarterly House Price Index. The second aspect is the production of a parallel report based on the asking price of dwellings in Northern Ireland. For the index based on the asking price of dwellings, the research draws on properties advertised through propertynews.com. The key underlying data requirements are the asking price of property, property type, location and other characteristics which reflect those for the index based on sale price. The third aspect of the study is an index of rents in the private rented sector across Northern Ireland which has resulted in the production of a half yearly report on the rental market. Affordability issues are at the forefront of the fourth and fifth strands of the study namely an affordability index based on the ratio of sale prices to incomes and in the rental markets affordability based on the ratio of private sector rents to income. The final element of the study is a GIS mapping tool and a visualization of spatial aspects of the analysis in conjunction with Spatialest.