National Statistics Institute - INE Spain

D.G. for Economic Statistics; S.G. for Short-Term Statistics; Housing Price Index Unit 

Avenida de Manoteras 50-52 

28050 MADRID - SPAIN

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.

Purchases of newly built dwellings corresponds to the HPI for newly built dwellings which covers all transactions of new dwellings made by households regardless of its final use.

Self-built dwellings and major renovations include significant modification, major interior restoration or transformation, reconstruction and enlargement, thus improving the existing dwelling.

Other services related to the acquisition of a dwelling add in all transaction costs connected to the purchase of a dwelling whether existing or new, for own use. The index is covering for instance notary fees and transaction taxes.

Major repairs and maintenance are normally associated to expenditures for material and services engaged for major maintenance, repair and decoration. Major repairs can prolong the life of the dwelling, but should not represent an improvement of the dwelling compared to its original state.

Insurance connected with the dwelling considers the service charges paid by owner occupiers for the kinds of insurance for his dwelling similar to those typically taken out by landlords (e.g. an insurance providing cover for the structure of a dwelling: walls, fences, gates, etc).

The sub-indices: existing dwellings new to households and other service related to ownership of dwellings sub-index are not covered because their expenditures are not considered significant in Spain.

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 whole country.

Data are available from the first quarter of 2010.

2015=100

The following units are used:
- Index point;
- Percentage change on the same period of the previous year (rates);
- Percentage change on the previous period (rates);
- Percentage share of the total (weights).

OOHPI is a quarterly statistics.

European:

- Regulation (EU) 2016/792  of the European Parliament and of the Council of 11 May 2016 on harmonised indices of consumer prices and the house price index;

- Commission implementing regulation 2023/1470 of 17 July 2023 laying down the methodological and technical specifications in accordance with Regulation (EU) 2016/792 of the European Parliament and of the Council as regards the house price index and the owner-occupied housing price index, and amending Commission Regulation (EU) 2020/1148

Not applicable.

The Statistical Law No. 12/1989 specifies that the INE cannot publish, or make otherwise available, individual data or statistics that would enable the identification of data for any individual person or entity (Article 13).

Law No. 15/1999 of December 13 on Protection of Personal Data, implemented by Royal Decree 1720/2007, contains provisions on confidentiality.

Royal Decree 994/1999, of 11 June, approves the Regulation on Mandatory Security Measures for the Computer Files which contain Personal Data.

Regulation (EU) 2016/792 of the European Parliament and of the Council of May 2016 on harmonised indices of consumer prices and the house price index.

According to policy rules (see point 7.1).

OOHPI is not published in Spain.

Not applicable.

Not applicable.

Quarterly (OOHPI) and annually (weights)

Not applicable.

Not applicable.

Not applicable.

Not applicable.

Not applicable.

Not available.

Not available.

The framework for the quality assurance of official statistics is based on the European Statistics Code of Practice. All data are checked for completeness and consistency with statistical concepts and definitions. Quality controls have been implemented within the OOHPI production process, in order to detect and correct errors.

Not available.

The main user is the European Central Bank.

Some satisfaction surveys are carried out periodically. User needs and opinions are taken into account. 

Currently, there are independent data for the next series (and the corresponding aggregates):

0.1.1.1.1. Purchases of new dwellings

0.1.1.1.2. Self-build dwellings and major renovations

0.1.1.3. Other services related to the acquisitions of dwellings

0.1.2.1. Major repairs and maintenance

0.1.2.2. Insurance connected with the dwelling

Expenditures on existing dwellings new to the household sector (O.1.1.2.) and other services related to ownership of dwellings (O.1.2.3.) are not considered significant in Spain.

The use of administrative data allows a high degree of accuracy and reliability of this statistics.

O.1.1.1.1 Purchase of new dwellings

The use of administrative data allows to obtain a high degree of accuracy and reliability. Data files used for index production have about 95 % of the new dwelling transacted ​​in the reference quarter. In addition, several actions are carried out during the production process to control the quality of the data and results, such as debugging, imputation of missing values ​​and analysis of outliers.

O.1.1.3 Other services related to the acquisition of dwellings

The use of administrative data allows to obtain a high degree of accuracy and reliability.

O.1.2.1 Major repairs& maintenance (and for O.1.1.1.2b Major renovations)

To minimize errors the largest possible sample is used.

O.1.2.2 Insurance connected with dwellings

The most important insurance companies provide information.  

O.1.1.1.1 Purchase of new dwellings

A software application has been developed to detect possible errors in the records, most of them are manually revised and corrected one by one but also, there is an automatically imputation of values in some cases.

O.1.1.3 Other services related to the acquisition of dwellings.

Prices collected for this index are administrative prices. There are no missing values.

O.1.2.1Major repairs and maintenance (and for O.1.1.1.2b Major renovations)

Prices are collected in outlets by INE staff. When there is lack of price, a procedure of estimation is used. It has also developed an application to detect and reduce errors in the process of collecting and recording

O.1.2.2 Insurance connected with dwellings

The most important insurance companies provide information, there are not missing values.

OOHPI is not published in Spain, OOHPI data are sent to Eurostat approximately 75 days after the end of the quarter.

OOHPI data is delivered approximately ten days before the target date.

Not applicable.

OOHPI data are fully comparable over time.

Not applicable.

HPI and OOH indices are fully consistent; HPI data on new dwellings are included in the OOHPI compilation.

Concerning weights, OOHPI weights are based on National Accounts information, and HPI ones on total values of dwelling transactions (provided by notaries). Every year, the resulting weights for new dwellings (HPI and OOHPI) are checked.

The production of OOHPI data involves a low employment cost and a minimum responder burden.

OOHPI series, including back data, may be revised for mistakes, new or improved information and changes in the system of harmonised rules.

Not applicable (OOHPI is not published in Spain).

See below.

The main source for prices depends on the sub-index.

O.1.1.1.1 Purchases of newly built dwellings

This index is equal to HPI for new dwellings. Prices are provided by notaries (administrative data).

O.1.1.3 Other services related to the acquisition of dwellings

Administrative data, transfer tax depends on regional governments and prices for notary service are administrative prices, both are published in official gazettes.

O.1.2.1 Major repairs and maintenance (and for O.1.1.1.2b Major renovations)

Prices for major repairs and major renovations are collected in the same sample of informants that the minor repairs of the CPI/HICP.

O.1.2.2 Insurance connected with dwellings

Prices for insurance connected with the dwellings are provided by the most important insurance companies.  

The main sources of weights are National Accounts and the database of notaries.

Monthly.

O.1.1.1.1 Purchases of newly built dwellings

Data are obtained by electronic database provided to the NSI office.

O.1.1.3 Other services related to the acquisition of dwellings

Administrative data are consulted by staff of the central NSI office, they are published in official gazettes.

O.1.2.1 Major repairs and maintenance (and for O.1.1.1.2b Major renovations)

Prices are collected by staff of the regional offices, in the same sample of informants that the minor repairs of the CPI/HICP.

O.1.2.2 Insurance connected with dwellings

The most important insurance companies send prices to the centralized services of the INE.

O.1.1.1.1 Purchases of newly built dwellings

The validation procedure includes:

- the correction of geographical mistakes;

- the control of extreme values using an initial filter for extremely prices and surfaces, and using a regression model to detect and exclude outliers;

- the imputation of extreme surfaces based on Cadastre information and the automatic imputation of the type of district, occasionally missing.

O.1.1.3 Other services related to the acquisition of dwellings

There are not missing data.

O.1.2.1Major repairs and maintenance (and for O.1.1.1.2b Major renovations)

Procedure of recording control.

Price changes over or under certain values are validated in provincial offices. Also, a process of repeated interview is carried out to assure the quality and veracity of the information.

In Central Services the extreme price changes are confirmed and the lack of price is estimated by the variation of the rest of prices really collected.

O.1.2.2 Insurance connected with dwellings

Prices for insurance connected with the dwellings are sent by the most important insurance to the centralized services of the INE. In Central Services the unusual changes on prices or weights are detected and confirmed.

See below.

See below.

OOHPI is a Laspeyres-type price index.

For O.1.1.1.1, elementary indices, per dwelling typology, are calculated as a ratio of the estimated prices (from the regression model) in the current quarter and in the last quarter of the previous year. These quarterly indices are aggregated using annual weights based on transaction values according to the Laspeyres formula to obtain the index for new dwellings referred to the fourth quarter of the previous year.

For the sub-indices O.1.1.1.2 and O.1.2.1 the prices collected for INE regional offices are aggregated using the geometric mean which are used in the constructions of elementary indices, they are aggregated using the Laspeyres index formula, weights are based on annual expenditures.

In a similar way, the elementary indices for each sub-index are aggregated and all of them are referred to the fourth quarter of the previous year.

Weights are updated annually with National Accounts information based on year t-2.

These weights are updated to 1-1.

OOHPI expenditure shares are updated to the year t-1.

Elementary aggregate weights are price updated to the fourth quarter of the year t-1 internally in the sub-index of O.1.1.1.1.

The indices in base 2015 are obtained linking the indices referring to the fourth quarter of the previous year, according to the Laspeyres chain-index formula.

Therefore, indices are annually chained and the linking period is the fourth quarter of the previous year.

See below.

The price of the dwelling is the price recorded in the transfer of ownership.

VAT is included in the price of newly built dwellings.

The purchases of existing dwellings involve the payment of transfer tax. There are different Transfer Tax rates per region.

Subsidised houses are excluded from OOHPI.

Land is excluded in the weights but included in the prices.

Housing cooperatives are included in HPI (consequently in O.1.1.1.1 of OOHPI). They represent around 0.6% of total dwelling transactions. They are identified in the regression model by a dichotomous variable. So, the coefficient corresponding to cooperatives reflects a price reduction. Therefore, it is taken into account in the quality adjustment. There is any distinction between cooperatives and other types of dwelling transactions therefore, all of them are taken into account in all sub-index.

Ordinary transactions and cooperatives are included in the HPI/HS calculation, inheritances and other types of operations outside the free market are not considered.

Transactions including more than one object (dwellings, garages, storage rooms) have a specific treatment in order to obtain one register per dwelling. The corresponding value of the rest of objects (garage or storage room) is excluded from the price, when possible. If there is no way to separate them, the total price is recorded and the variables garage and storage room are imputed to indicate it.

Fractional transactions are not considered (a sale of the property implies that all the co-owners agree to sell it).

See below.

Laspeyres-type price index.

For O.1.1.1.1. Purchases of newly built dwellings, every year the set of dwelling typologies is revised.

For O.1.1.1.2. Self-build dwellings and major renovations and O.1.2.1. Major repairs and maintenance, every five years the sample of both articles and establishments is reviewed.

For other sub-indices, the most representative articles are studied every several years.

For O.1.1.1.1. Purchases of newly built dwellings, hedonics (average characteristics method) is used to adjust for quality changes. A semi-logarithmic equation is used, where the logarithm of the price per square meter is the dependent variable. The following dwelling characteristics are included in the model:

Type of dwelling (flat/house);
New/second-hand;
Garage (Yes/No);
Storage room (Yes/No);
Cooperative (Yes/No);
Area (10 intervals);
Floor (6 categories);
Cluster of provinces (6 groups);
Municipality size (4 categories);
Tourist municipality (4 types);
Type of district (classification of postcodes in 14 groups).

The model is applied quarterly and the parameter estimations represent the implicit prices of the characteristics. Prices are estimated for a fixed set of dwelling typologies over the year. Annual weights per dwelling typology are combined with estimated prices each quarter, so that the indices capture pure price changes. The regression model is revised annually.

For the other sub-indices quality adjustment procedures are applied every time there is a replacement, in order to assess whether there is any quality difference and decide the most appropriate treatment accordingly.

Administrative data are always completed.

When prices are collected, if the price of some informant is missing, its evolution is estimated with the rest of the informants.

Discounts are not common in this market but all extreme variations observed are reviewed.

For prices collected in regional offices they are first validated during the recording stage and all significant price changes must be checked and explained. They are subsequently edited and validated again at central level.

There have not been cases of zero prices. 

VAT in included in the prices.

No seasonal adjustments are made.

None.