National Statistical Institute of the Czech Republic.

43 Price Statistics

Czech Statistical Office / Na padesátém 81 / 100 82 Praha 10 - Strašnice / Czech Republic

HPIs give comparable measures for changes in the prices of dwellings. They are calculated according to a harmonised approach and a single set of definitions.

The HPI measures the evolution of market prices of all residential properties that are purchased by households, independently of its previously owners or final use.

Index numbers and weights are made available at the level of detail established by the Commission Implementing Regulation (EU) 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.

HPI covers the whole household sector.

HPI data for the purchases of newly built and existing dwellings are compiled on the basis of full transaction prices. The HPI covers all transactions of dwellings made by households regardless of their final use. The weights for the two sub-indices are equal to the total value of dwelling transactions for new and existing dwellings, respectively. Both prices and weights include land value, as recommended by the Manual.

The data published: Quarterly indices HPI (2015=100).

Index refers to market prices of transactions in dwellings of the whole household sector.

HPI comprises all purchases of dwellings in a member state by households within the territory of a country.

HPI covers the entire area of the country.

HPI for the Czech Republic are available since 2008.

The index reference period is 2015=100.

Index of prices expressed in national currency.  (Reference period 2015=100)

Relevant quarters

Commission Implementing Regulation (EU) 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.

National Statistics Act

Not applicable for HPI

Regulation (EC) No 223/2009 of the European Parliament and of the Council, of 11 March 2009, on the transmission of data subject to statistical confidentiality to the Statistical Office of the European Communities.

Aggregation of information, aggregation rules on aggregated confidential data, primary confidentiality with regard to single data values.

Eurostat timetable.

Eurostat's website.

Eurostat.

Quarterly.

Eurostat.

Both Eurostat and the Czech Statistical Office releases the index on its website.

Eurostat.

Not available.

Not available.

Technical manual on Owner-Occupied Housing and House Price Indices.(Eurostat)

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. Automatic quality controls have been implemented within the HPI production process, in order to detect and correct errors in the data files that are received. Outliers, such as dwellings with particularly small or large floor area or very high or low prices per m2 are excluded from the index.

More detailed description of the controls on the quality of the data:

Stage 1 – Price information is gathered from several sources: by the price collectors (in real estate offices), via questionnaires and from administrative sources. Data is checked by the central office staff. Price collection by questionnaires is done during the next month after the reference quarter. Price collection by price collectors is done during reference quarter. Extreme price deviations are sorted out with the help of software. There is no automatic rejection. A 'preliminary partial indices' are then processed by central office staff. This stage ends towards Q + 75.

Stage 2 – Central staff checks the preliminary results of partial indices. Then quality adjustment and procedures are carried out. Final HPI is composed from final partial indices. This stage ends towards Q + 85.

HPI are considered to be sufficiently accurate for all practical purposes they are put into.

HPI serves mainly as an inflation measure in housing market. It may also serve as input to economic forecasting and analysis or for accounting purposes and deflating other series.

Not systematically collected; requirements of users implemented if possible.

HPIs produced for:  H11 Purchases of newly built dwellings and H12 Purchases of existing dwellings.

The HPI are relevant for their purposes but the accuracy is lower than the accuracy of HICP. The accuracy of source data is monitored by assessing the methodological soundness of price and weight sources and the adherence to the methodological recommendations. There is a variety of data sources both for weights (National Account data, Cadastre database data, etc.) and prices (Cadastre database data, questionnaires to developers, visits to local real estate agencies). The type of survey and the price collection methods ensure sufficient coverage. There is, however, trade-off between accuracy and timeliness: resulting data need revisions.

Transactions of all household, all main housing types and all regions are covered.

The HPIs are statistical estimates that are subject to sampling errors because they are based on a sample of housing transactions which are not the complete universe of all housing prices. The exact sampling error is not known. The CZSO tries to reduce the sampling errors by using a sample of housing prices that is as large as possible, given resource constraints.

Not known.

House price index numbers are sent according to a pre-announced schedule to Eurostat within 85 days after the end of the reference quarter and weights are sent before 15 June of the year following the year to which the weights relate.

Always sent in time.

The same methodology and data processing used for data from all the regions; coverage of regions reflects the geographical distribution of the intensity of housing market.

HPI data are revised over time. There have been several improvements in methodology since the HPI was introduced with the aim of improving reliability.  Back calculations under the improved methodology or newer standards were performed and sent to Eurostat.

Not available.

HPIs are internally coherent. Higher level aggregations are derived from detailed indices according to well-defined procedures.

0.5 person plus data collection 

HPI series, including back data, are revisable. The published HPI data may be revised for mistakes, new or improved information, and changes in the methodology.

Revisions of the statistical process are done in line with the changes of available data sources (e.g. new source of data of better quality vs. extinct administrative data), legally based changes in methodology and changes in rules settin prices of dwellings (e.g. introduction or abolishment of taxes).

The (planned) revision of weighting scheme is done every years based on National Accounts data is. Similarly, the revision of detailed weights based on Cadastre information is done usually every 2 years (next one in 2022).

There is no specific national policy for correcting mistakes and errors in HPI production. The solution should follow CZSO general principles on dissemination policy. Regarding the specific solution found, a possible revision of previous results might occur.

See below.

Existing dwellings (transaction prices):

1. Price collectors - selected real estate agencies.

2. Administrative source - Cadastre

Newly built dwellings (transaction prices):

3. Questionnaires to main developers.

HPI weights are based on actual dwelling transaction values. The partition of the total HPI weight into newly built and existing dwellings is done using information available from the same source as used for prices (mainly Cadastre) and from NA. 

Administrative source - Cadastre

Data are collected and published quarterly.

Questionnaire on new flats and family houses: cca 50 developers.

Direct survey on second-hand dwellings (only flats): from cca 70 real estate agencies.

Cadastre - administrative data (both flats and family houses).

Various procedures ensure that errors are minimised in the data. The following validation checks are made on each record in the source data.

1. Price collectors and questionnaires.

• Extreme values are identified and eliminated if thought necessary

• data cleaning is done to remove cases of obviously erroneous data;

• minimum and maximum values are investigated and removed if believed to be suspect;

2. Administrative data – regular analysis and adjustable filters for extremes.

3. Data processing: Second validation – checking for extraordinary low/high prices, checking for extra price movements within time.

4. Final calculations, publications: Validation of individual results after quality adjustments procedures. Assessment of overall results.

See below.

See below.

HPI is a Laspeyres-type price chained index.

Annual chained index.

Weights: the main sources for the sub-index weights of Existing dwellings is the Cadastre data;

for Newly built dwellings - statistics of newly built dwellings (Czech Statistical Office) and their sales (private business information))

Source of detailed weights - Cadastre.

The weighting reference period used in Y is the year Y-1 (data from Cadastre). 

The weighting reference period used in Y is the year Y-1 (data from Cadastre).

The detailed weights are adjusted with a price changes between the year Y-1 and the last quarter of the year Y-1.

Annual chaining applied on higher levels of aggregations.

Computation of lowest level indices:

the ratio of the arithmetic mean of quality adjusted prices is used for computing the elementary prices indices.

Used for analysis and derivation of adjustment coefficients, not for regular computation.

not used

Detailed stratification according to region, city/town, parts of bigger cities.

Quality adjustment coefficients are used for main physical characteristics.

See below.

The price of the dwelling is the price in the sale contract. The information about price is obtained form real estate agencies under this condition. The data are used in the HPI for the quarter in which the sale contract was signed.

Also the administrative data from Cadastre use the price in the sale contract referring to the quarter of the legal ownership change.

VAT is included in the price of new dwellings.

Taxes other than VAT are not included in the price of dwellings.

The HPI includes only transactions at market prices. Some transactions from government or co-operative to household sector are markedly below market prices - they are excluded from the HPI. They cover negligible part of all dwelling transactions.

The price of land is included in both prices and weights.

Housing cooperatives are not covered in the HPI.

Non-market transactions are neither included in prices nor in weights.

Multi-object transactions are estimated in weights, but excluded in prices.

Fractional transactions are excluded.

For data collection - see 11.1.

Processing:

Prices are automatically filtered for unprovable outliers first (manual setting of first filters).

In next steps the remaining otliers are identified and excluded according to (second) filters, which are based (adjusted) on first preliminary results.

Price indices of areas not covered or insufficiently covered are estimated based on similar or higher-level price indices.

No adjustments other than quality adjustment are applied to the HPI data. The housing market displays small seasonal effects on house prices. In majority of years, prices tend to be usually slightly above trend in the summer months and slightly below the trend in winter. These effects are not removed from HPI.

Not applicable.