Independent and accurate property prices in Spain

Despite my reservations about the official house price data from the Spanish Ministry of Housing (MVIV) and the National Institute of Statistics (INE), we've been updating and translating some of that data and making it available here.

We've now decided to stop updating that data because the data from Tinsa is better, more readily available and answers the question most people want answered:

"When will the bottom of the market occur?"

Tinsa publish changes to their Spanish property index on the first Tuesday of each month - and you can download it here. It's a three page report - in Spanish and English - and it's worth 15 minutes of your time to make sense of the data it contains.

I commented last month about why the Tinsa data is valuable, so let's see how we can use it.

The first thing to point out is that the Tinsa index doesn't attempt to give actual house values, its value is in quantifying the broad trends in the Spanish property market. So, starting at a nominal figure of 1,000 in 2001, the general Tinsa index peaked at 2239 in early 2008, and has since fallen to 2,039 last month.

In terms of describing the trend in Spanish house prices, that correlates very closely with reality. between 2001 and 2008 house prices more than doubled, and in the last 12 months or so, they declined by about 10%.

Tinsa also maintain separate indexes for different parts of Spain - and we can see the relative performance of large cities, metropolitan areas, the Mediterranean coast and the Islands.

While none of this type of information is particularly unusual in other countries, the Tinsa index is unique in Spain. The fact that it started in 2001, is accurate, freely available and in English, makes the Tinsa index unique in Spain.

Tinsa also chart a rolling annual change in their index. Their latest report shows that between the years of 2001 and 2006, their index (and therefore house prices) increased at about 15% per annum.

Around mid 2006, that rate of increase began to slow and since early 2008, the index (and therefore house prices) began to show an annual decrease. Again, this is entirely in keeping with our first-hand experience of reality in Spain.

Last month's Tinsa index showed that, comparing January 2009 with January 2008, the index (and therefore house prices) had decreased by 10%. The glimmer of hope contained in the Tinsa index for February 2009 shows this rate of decline slowing to 9%.

Hardly cause for celebration yet - but let's face it, any good news is welcome at the moment. Many people, including myself, will be eagerly awaiting the first Tuesday of April to see if that trend continues in the March edition of the Tinsa index.

Basically, Tinsa have managed to do what the Ministry of Housing and the Institute of National Statistics have failed to do - provide accurate and usable house price data for the Spanish market.

That's why, for the foreseeable future, we'll be reviewing the Tinsa data each month and leaving the Ministry data on hold.

Martin Dell, Kyero.com

Winner of the 2008 & 2007 CNBC award for Best Property Portal Spain and 2007 Best International Property Portal, Kyero.com is the leading web site connecting buyers and sellers of Spanish property. Featuring 100,000 properties from 1,500 estate agents, Kyero.com is privately owned and based in southern Spain.

Kyero.com was the first dedicated Spanish property portal to join the Association of International Property Professionals (AIPP), a consumer association setting standards and protecting buyers of overseas property.

Each quarter Kyero.com collates pricing information from thousands of properties to produce the Spanish House Price Index