House prices, rents and affordability

This 3-year research project funded by the NIHE provides key and strategic data and data analytics and reporting for examining the performance of the NI housing market. This encompasses various dimensions including housing market performance, the performance of the private rented sector (PRS) and insights into housing market affordability in the homeownership and rental markets which takes account of the deposit gap that home purchasers need to bridge and how that impacts on ability to access the housing market. This project provides the NIHE and wider audiences with transparent evidence of market performance, the basis for NIHE to align their strategic housing need assessments and housing monitor and investment plans. It is also provides key national governmental departments such as the ONS with data for producing the development of macro-economic indicators for NI and contributes to the UK official statistics such as the determination of gross family expenditure statistics, a number of official inflation measure statistics (IPHRP, CPI and CPIH) for Northern Ireland and evidence based benchmarks and directly for informing social policy setting providing direct evidence for determining Local Housing Allowance analysis and housing benefit in private sector, social rents and valuing social dwellings and policy for directing social housing investment and development.

The following key outcomes for the project are as follows:

• The production of a NI wide quarterly house price performance index
• The production of NI wide half-yearly rental performance index
• The production of an NI wide annual housing market Affordability index
• The production of an NI wide annual rental market Affordability index
• The production of an NI wide annual Asking price performance index