URA unveils revised private residential property price index

It has more comprehensive transaction coverage.

The Urban Redevelopment Authority (URA) has unveiled revisions to the private residential property price index.

The revised PPI uses an improved methodology and more comprehensive coverage of transactions to reflect the diversity of the property market.

“Since the last revision to the PPI methodology in 2000, the private housing market has become more diverse. For instance, there is greater variation in the unit size and age of private housing developments. To ensure that the PPI remains robust, we have reviewed and improved the computation methodology,” stated the URA.

The improved PPI adopts the stratified hedonic regression method which can better control for variations in the attributes of transacted private properties such as age and unit size. It also switched from 12-quarter moving average weights to 5-quarter fixed weights and adopted a new base period of 1Q2009.

“We have supplemented the existing data sources used to compute the PPI with stamp duty data from the Inland Revenue Authority of Singapore. With this, the improved PPI will capture all private housing transactions,” added the URA.