About the International House Price Database

Access to international house price data with ample geographic and temporal coverage facilitates the work of researchers, scholars and policymakers interested in the study of housing through cross-country comparison and time series analysis. To promote this research further and enhance our understanding of its international dimension, the Globalization and Monetary Policy Institute of the Federal Reserve Bank of Dallas makes available its own international house price database.

The dataset uses publicly available, primary national sources and includes quarterly data on nominal and real house prices—complemented with information on private disposable income (PDI)—for 19 advanced countries, starting in the first quarter 1975. We select a house price index for each country in the sample to be consistent with the concept measured and the method applied by the Federal Housing Finance Agency (FHFA) quarterly nationwide house price index for existing single-family houses in the U.S., which we take as our benchmark series for comparison. However, given the heterogeneity of the existing sources across countries, some departures in concept or method in measuring house prices are unavoidable.

On a case-by-case basis, we extend the preferred country series back to the first quarter 1975—to match the FHFA house price index sample coverage—with available historical data or secondary sources of similar characteristics. Each country’s house price index is seasonally adjusted over the entire sample period and then rebased to 2005=100. Each house price index is expressed in nominal terms, but it is also presented in real terms, deflating the nominal price index with the personal consumption expenditure (PCE) deflator of the corresponding country. PDIs are always quoted in per capita terms using working-age population and are similarly expressed in real terms with the PCE deflator. We aggregate all 19 countries in the database, weighted by their purchasing power parity-adjusted GDP shares in 2005, to compute an average (nominal and real) house price series and an average (nominal and real) per capita PDI series.

A brief overview of the sources and the methodology applied for selecting and homogenizing the data for comparability purposes can be found in Mack, Adrienne, and Enrique Martínez-García (2011), “A Cross-Country Quarterly Database of Real House Prices: A Methodological Note.” Globalization and Monetary Policy Institute Working Paper no. 99 (Federal Reserve Bank of Dallas, December). We would appreciate that anyone wishing to use this dataset, modified or otherwise, in published work acknowledges its origin with a citation of the working paper and this webpage. For example, “The authors acknowledge use of the dataset described in Mack and Martínez-García (2011).”

Download the Data

• Fourth Quarter 2011
• Third Quarter 2011
• Second Quarter 2011

NOTE: The second quarter 2011 data has been revised. The nominal personal disposable income data for Canada was not indexed to 2005 = 100 in the original release of the data, which affects both the Canadian series and the OECD-19 aggregate series. Therefore, we offer a revised version, with the Canadian series indexed to 2005 = 100, using the same vintage of data as the original release.

Charts

Charts 1 and 2 provide a snapshot and overview of the real (inflation-adjusted) house price data from first quarter 1975 to fourth quarter 2010 for all 19 countries in the database. Chart 1 compares periods of contraction of real house prices with downturns in economic activity as measured by real GDP for each country in our panel. Chart 2 plots the aggregate real house price series, the aggregate series excluding the U.S., and the U.S. series, illustrating their differences over time.

Related Reading

• "Increased Real House Price Volatility Signaled Break from Great Moderation," Federal Reserve Bank of Dallas Economic Letter, Vol. 7, No. 1, January 2012
• Appendix: Increased Real House Price Volatility Signaled Break from Great Moderation
• "A Cross-Country Quarterly Database of Real House Prices: A Methodological Note," Globalization and Monetary Policy Institute Working Paper No. 99