Federal Statistical Office of Germany (DESTATIS)

Division D3 – Prices

Statistisches Bundesamt (Federal Statistical Office), Gustav-Stresemann-Ring 11, 65189 Wiesbaden, GERMANY

The OOHPI is based on the ‘net acquisitions’ approach, which measures changes in prices paid by households for the acquisition of dwellings that are new to the household sector and changes in other costs related to the ownership and transfer of ownership of dwellings.

The OOHPI is broken down into the following expenditure categories:

• O.1. Owner-occupiers’ housing expenditure;
  • O.1.1. Acquisitions of dwellings;
    • O.1.1.1. New dwellings;
      • O.1.1.1.1. Purchases of newly built dwellings;
      • O.1.1.1.2. Self-build dwellings and major renovations;
    • O.1.1.2. Existing dwellings new to households;
    • O.1.1.3. Other services related to the acquisition of dwellings;
  • O.1.2. Ownership of dwellings;
    • O.1.2.1. Major repairs and maintenance;
    • O.1.2.2. Insurance connected with dwellings;
    • O.1.2.3. Other services related to ownership of dwellings.

Households which are owner occupiers.

The main statistical variables are price indices.

The basic unit of statistical observation are transaction prices of dwellings new to the household sector and of other products that the households acquire in their role as owner-occupiers.

Owner occupied dwellings.

The OOHPI covers the entire country.

An exception is made for O.1.1.1.1 (new dwellings, taken from the HPI): The HPI is in general is a full census, with the exception of Baden-Wuerttemberg where currently a cut-off sample is applied. It is planned to include all ECPVs in the reporting obligation (see also Metadata for the HPI).

Data are available since the first quarter of 2010.

2015=100

The following units are used:

- Index point;
- Percentage change from the current quarter to the same quarter of the previous year (rates);
- Percentage change from the current quarter to the previous quarter (rates);
- Percentage share of the total (weights).

The compiled quarterly indices represent the whole calendar quarter.

EU legal acts: Framework Regulation (EU) 2016/792 of the European Parliament and of the Council,  Commission Implementing Regulation (EU) 2023/1470
Legal acts on national level, partly relevant for the OOHPI: "Gesetz über die Preisstatistik" (last amended December 2022)

None

There are no national regulations that deal specifically with OOHPI confidentiality.
The national legislation for statistical confidentiality in general is paragraph 16 of the Act on Statistics for
Federal Purposes (Gesetz über die Statistik für Bundeszwecke - BStatG) of 22nd January 1987, last updated 20 December 2022 (BGBl. I page 2727)

Not applicable.

The indices have to be provided to Eurostat 85 days after the end of the reference quarter. The indices are published nationally approximately one working day before. The exact dates can be accessed via the release calendar.

The national release calendar can be accessed as follows :
http://www.destatis.de → English → Menu → Press → Annual release calendar
Search for "Residential property price indices" or table code "61262"

The Eurostat release calendar can be accessed using the following link: https://ec.europa.eu/eurostat/news/release-calendar

All users may access the data at the same time. The OOHPI is made available in the database GENESIS-Online which can be accessed via the website of the Federal Statistical Office of Germany (DESTATIS).

Quarterly dissemination for the indices and annual update of the weights.

There is no press release for the OOHPI.

See 10.6 documentation on methodology. There have been no publications specifically on OOH besides the named article in WISTA.

Data is uploaded to the database of DESTATIS "GENESIS-ONLINE" (EVAS: 61262).

Micro-data is not disseminated.

Not relevant.

The last article on OOHPI methodologies has been published in "Wirtschaft und Statistik", a publication of DESTATIS. It can be found in issue 5/2018 in German ("Preisindizes für selbst genutztes Wohneigentum").

Not available.

The European Statistics Code of Practice as well as the Quality Assurance Framework serves as the basis for the Quality Manual of the Statistical Offices of the Federation and the Laender in Germany.
Furthermore there is a guideline for the handling of mistakes and revisions.

See 10.7 quality management - documentation, 13. Accuracy, 18. Statistical processing.

Main users are the Deutsche Bundesbank and the ECB. There are no official publications.

Not available.

All relevant expenditure categories defined in Commission Implementing Regulation (EU) 2023/1470, except 'Existing dwellings new to households' (O.1.1.2.).

Estimates of the overall accuracy of the OOHPI are not made.

Not applicable (No probability sampling is used for the OOHPI and/or its sub-indices).

O.1.1.1.1: Non-sampling errors are not quantified for the HPI. Unit and item non-response are monitored.
Item non-response by ECPVs and overall non-response are calculated, and the causes of non-response are analysed. Approximately 45% of all transmitted data can not be processed due to missing information in important variables. About 5% of records are excluded due to plausibility checks.

O.1.2.2 (insurances) and O.1.1.3a (real estate agents) are collected from online portals. It is not yet known exactly how much of the respective market is covered therewith.

OOHPI is typically published approximately 86 days after the end of the period to which the OOHPI relates.

Data is delivered according to the deadlines scheduled in the Commission Implementing Regulation (EU) 2023/1470.

There are no regional figures available for the OOHPI.

O.1.1.1.1:  The comparability of the HPI is limited by the fact that not all federal states reported data when the HPI was first set up:  The geographical coverage for HPI has been improved continuously. From 2010 to 2012 nine federal states reported data for the HPI. In 2013 data collection was expanded to cover the whole economic territory of Germany. Since 2015 ECPVs of all 16 federal states transmit data. Therefore, the HPI before 2015 is not exactly comparable to the HPI after 2015. This information is shared in the metadata and the German quality report to inform users about this break.

In 2019 the HPI was revised back until 2016 due to methodological changes in the calculation. Therefore, there is a break in the time series of the HPI before 2016 and from 2016 on. The revision and an explanation why it was done was published in German together with the press release in 2019 and can still be accessed by the following link:

https://www.destatis.de/DE/Themen/Wirtschaft/Preise/Baupreise-Immobilienpreisindex/Methoden/Erlaeuterungen/revision-hpi.html

O.1.1.3: The sub-index of real estate agents fees has been calculated in connection with the national CPI until the end of 2018. Since the first quarter of 2019 the prices are collected centrally by the FSO and the index is calculated centrally, too. There has been a quality adjustment so that there is no methodological breach in the index series.
O.1.2.2: The sample of communities was reorganized in 2015 which is firstly taken into account in the index calculation of 2016Q1. Until 2015 there has only been a yearly index calculation. Since 2016 the index is produced quarterly.
O.1.2.3: The index calculation started in 2017Q1. The index for property management has been calculated in connection with the national CPI until the end of 2018. Since the first quarter of 2019 the prices are still collected by the Länder but the index is calculated centrally. There is no methodological breach.

Not applicable.

HPI data on new dwellings are included in the OOHI compilation (O.1.1.1.1). Consistency is thereby ensured.

Only for O.1.1.1.1 (HPI, new dwellings) and O.1.2.2 (Insurances) new data collections were designed. The other indices are available from pre-existing statistics or public sources.

O.1.1.1.1 (HPI, new dwellings):
A software module was developed that extracts data from the administrative database of the ECPVs and delivers the extract to Destatis automatically. Therefore the burden is considered minimal. However, those ECPVs that do not use one of the major software products, have to extract data from their respective database. The data itself should in principle be recorded by the ECPVs due to their own tasks, even without Destatis demanding it.

Revisions must be pre-announced. Each quarterly result is labeled "provisional" at the first publication and is revised with the following quarterly publication. Final results are available in June of the following year.

In October 2018 the years 2015 to 2017 have been revised, due to the regular change from base year 2010 to 2015 of the construction price statistics and the producer price statistics which are the basis of O.1.1.1.2. In June 2019, there was a revision for the years 2016 to 2018 because of the adapted calculation of the HPI.

See below.

The index for purchase of new dwellings (O.1.1.1.1) is based on administrative data from the Expert Committees for Property Valuation (ECPVs). The ECPVs receive the purchase contracts from the notaries.
The new dwellings index for self-builders, the price indices for major renovations as well as for major repairs and maintenance are compiled from official construction price statistics.
The price index for new pre-fabricated dwellings is taken from official producer price statistics for industrial products.
The price indices for other services related to the acquisitions of dwellings, for insurance connected with the dwelling and for other services related to ownership of dwellings are calculated on the basis of specific surveys/data collections.

(The index existing dwellings new to the household sector is not yet available.)

Weights are mostly based on National Accounts data, on data provided by construction statistics and by service statistics.

Most data are collected quarterly, several in a monthly cycle (pre-fabricated houses, real estate agent, property management).
Data for weights are collected annually.

Data are collected by the statistical offices of the Länder and by the federal statistical office. Most data are collected for other statistics such as the construction prices.
Construction prices are obtained from a survey of construction companies. The survey is still conducted analogue, the introduction of an online survey is being prepared.
The federal office collects data for purchase of new dwellings (house price index) from adminstrative data, for pre-fabricated houses from production industry enterprises, the notarial charges and real estate transfer taxes are fixed by law. Insurance premiums are collected mainly from online price calculators from insurance companies, brokerage fees are gathered from a real estate portal.

O.1.1.1.1 (HPI -newly dwellings):
• Extreme values and obviously erroneous data are identified and eliminated by cut-off values based on the analysis of yearly data
• Multidimensional outliers are identified by Least Trimmed Squares and eliminated
• ECPVs which sent extraordinarily more/less data in a quarter compared to the previous quarters are contacted to ensure that no technical errors have occured
• If a lot of records of an ECPV show conspicuous patterns in scatter plots, then the ECPV is contacted to find out the reasons

O.1.1.1.2a: Application of standardised software in regional statistical offices that contains validation checks. In the federal office the regional results are analysed by cross-comparison.
O.1.1.1.2b: Application of standardised software in regional statistical offices that contains validation checks. In the federal office the regional results are analysed by cross-comparison.
O.1.2.1: Application of standardised software in regional statistical offices that contains validation checks. In the federal office the regional results are analysed  by cross-comparison.
O.1.2.2: Cross-comparison between insurances.
O.1.2.3: Application of standardised software in regional statistical offices that contains validation checks. In the federal office the regional results are analysed  by cross-comparison.

 See below.

See below.

The OOHPI should be a Laspeyres-type price index. Currently a price updating of the weights (based on data from t-1) between t-1 and q4 of t-1 is not yet implemented. It is therefore a Young index.

see annex 1

see annex 1 attached to 18.5.1.2

Weights are updated on a yearly basis. National accounts of t-1 data are used where available. Other statistics used for the derivation of the weights are service statistics of t-3 (for property management) and the micro census of t-4 for the ownership rate.

Weights are not yet adjusted with a price change between the year t-1 and the fourth quarter of the year t-1.

The indices are chain-linked with the fourth quarter of the last year.

See below.

Binding contract.

VAT is not included in the price of purchases of newly built dwellings.

Other taxes are not included in the price of dwellings (the property transfer tax is included in O1.1.3)

Not relevant.

Land is included in the prices for purchases of newly built dwellings. Land is excluded from the weights of the OOHPI.

Housing cooperatives are not included. Housing cooperatives are included as a type of landlord in the survey for rents of the HICP.

The following cases of property transactions are not to be transmitted by the ECPVs: transfer by the way of gift, expropriations, hereditary building right, inheritances, exchanges of properties. Furthermore, unusual transactions such as foreclosures (and others) are marked by the ECPVs and excluded in the course of the calculation of the HPI.

The ECPVs do not transmit multi-object transactions to us if they can not be split up into single units.

The German HPI covers freehold flats, where single apartments in a multi apartment building are sold. Other fractional transactions are not included.

See below.

Construction prices: the statistical offices of the Länder calculate a geometric mean of the price relatives.

The elementary aggregate for brokerage fees is a median of the surveyed percentages per region.

Building insurances: the modus per adress and insurance company is used. The modus is used, because during the process of webscraping mistakes may occur which result in wrong values.

Construction prices: if a product is temporarily missing, then imputation is used (the price development is updated by the price development of the same construction work of another reporting unit). If a construction work is permanently no longer available, then the price collection of a similar construction work within the given framework for the respective construction work is used.

Construction prices: Depending on the specific case judgmental quality adjustment or price change taken as quality change (companies are asked to indicate changes in the type or quality of the construction work in the questionnaire.

For construction prices: see 18.5.3.2. Replacements.

For building insurances: scraping is repeated in case of missing prices due to errors. If this does not lead to a result, then premiums are again collected manually (using the online tools). It is problematic, if an online calculator is not available any more. Then the last price is updated by an adjustment factor, that is published by the GdV (general association of the German insurance industry). If an online calculator is permanently not available any more, then the respective insurance company is excluded from the calculation beginning with the respective next June. Weights for the other insurances are adapted accordingly.

not applicable.

Not applicable.

VAT is included in the observed prices with the exception of O.1.2.2: there is no VAT for residential building insurances, instead there is an insurance tax.

There is no seasonal adjustment or time series decomposition.

None.