Statistics Finland

Social statistics, Housing and construction

Työpajankatu 13, PO box 5 C, Helsinki, FI-00022 Finland

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.

Old dwellings, new dwellings.

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. Both prices and weights include land value, as recommended by the technical manual on Owner-Occupied Housing and House Price Indices.

Market prices of transactions in dwellings

Dwellings in a member state

The Finnish HPI covers the entire area of the country.

Total HPIs for Finland are available from 2009 onwards.

Reference period for HPIs sent to Eurostat is 2015=100. 

Following units are used:

• Index;
• Percentage change on the same period of the previous year (rates);
• Percentage change on the previous period (rates).

Percentage share of the total (weights)

National currency

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.

There is no relevant national regulations which aim at ensuring the production of house price indices, but as house price indices are also part of national CPI and CPI is included in several legal acts as reference index the production is ensured.

Institutional mandate is 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.

The access to the microdata is limited to the certain part of the staff of Statistics Finland.

The indices of existing and new dwellings in housing companies are published quarterly at the end of the month following the reference quarter (national publishing). 

The index of existing detached houses are published quarterly 1.6 months after the reference quarter (national publishing).

The aggregate indices (HPIs) are compiled from the indices abowe and then send to Eurostat as scheduled.

Not available

Not available

HPI is produced quarterly for Eurostat.

There is a regular news release on the web-site on date given in release calendar.

• Existing and new dwellings in housing companies: Prices of dwellings in housing companies - Statistics Finland
  
• Existing detached houses:Real estate prices - Statistics Finland
  

Finnish house price indices are published quarterly as separate releases: prices of dwellings in housing companies and existing detached houses. The total HPI's are published on Eurostat's Internet pages: http://ec.europa.eu/eurostat/web/housing-price-statistics

Dwellings in housing companies:https://www.stat.fi/en/statistics/ashi. Existing detached houses: https://www.stat.fi/en/statistics/kihi

Dwellings in housing companies: https://pxweb2.stat.fi/PxWeb/pxweb/en/StatFin/StatFin__ashi/; Existing detached houses: https://pxweb2.stat.fi/PxWeb/pxweb/en/StatFin/StatFin__kihi/

Access to the micro-data is very limited and the user needs a licence to use statistical data. Licensees are usually government affiliated research institutes and not private persons or private companies. If the licence is granted, the data is treated so that no single purchase of dwelling or detached house is recognizable. More information about service practices are available from the web page http://www.stat.fi/tup/hallinnolliset/index_en.html.

There is no other format for dissemination. 

Documentation on methodology is available on the Statistics Finland website:

• Dwellings in housing companies: https://www.stat.fi/en/statistics/documentation/ashi
  
• Existing detached houses: https://www.stat.fi/en/statistics/documentation/kihi

See 10.6.

Statistics Finland follows the principles of the EFQM (European Foundation for Quality Management) model in its activity. The agency is a key corporate member of Excellence Finland. Statistics Finland observes the European Statistics Code of Practice and Quality Assurance Framework approved by the European Commission and supports other producers of Official Statistics of Finland in their development of quality and implementation of the Code and QAF. Statistics Finland also organises training in matters related to the quality of statistics and quality development. The quality principles and good practices of statistical work have been gathered into the handbook Quality Guidelines for Official Statistics which is updated at regular intervals of a couple of years. https://www.stat.fi/org/tilastotoimi/statistical-principles-and-quality_en.html.

Quality management not available.

Used for comparison of price development of housing between EU countries. Users: ECB, press, others.

Not available for the HPI or subindices.

Covers major part of purchases of existing dwellings. For newly built dwellings a good sample is covered countrywide. 

Not available. For old multi-unit dwellings HPI's sales are covered in total. The HPI's for existing multi-unit dwellings cover also the sales made by enterprises. For existing detached houses the sales of houses that are located on rented plot are excluded. The coverage of newly built dwellings data in the HPI is around 70 percent starting from 2018.

Not available. For existing multi-unit dwellings, sales are covered in total.

Not available. For existing multi-unit dwellings, the sales are covered in total.

National HPI is not published. Prices for existing and new multi-unit dwellings are published around 30 days after the reference quarter, existing detached houses are published around 48 days after the reference quarter.

House price index numbers are sent 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.

Fully comparable to other EU countries. Total HPIs are not published for regions. 

The released data on HPI's are fully comparable starting from 2015. In 2017 the methodology for compiling the indices of existing detached houses was updated. The HPI was revised accordingly, and backdata was calculated to form a comparable time series. In 2020, the methodology of price index of new multi-unit dwellings was updated and HPI was revised starting from 2015. In 2022, the methodology of price index of existing multi-unit dwellings was updated and HPI was revised starting from 2015. In addition, self-build dwellings were excluded from the HPI as well as from House sales indicators in 2022. 

For house sales indicators the data are comparable starting from 2020.

The HPI ja OOHPI sub-indices for new dwellings are the same. 

All figures are checked for internal consistency.

The employment cost is approximately 25 working days/year. There is approximately 2 full time equilivent persons working on HPI/OOH in Statistics Finland. 

HPI data are revisable. The first publication is preliminary and finalised on the time of the publication of the next quarter. The published HPI data may be revised for mistakes, new or improved information, and changes in the system of harmonised rules.

The price data used in the national publication of the existing multi-unit dwellings is revised over the year, so that the final data for the year are published in the release concerning the first quarter of the following year. Rest of the HPI subindices are not revised.

See below.

Existing multi-unit dwellings: The data of the statistics on multi-unit dwelling prices are based on the price information gathered by the Finnish Tax Administration for asset transfer tax calculation purposes. Additionally, the Tax Administration’s Register of Real Estate Property and Statistics Finland’s data on the dwelling stock that are based on the Population Register Centre’s Register of Buildings and Dwellings are also used for the statistics.

New multi-unit dwellings: The data of the statistics on new multi-unit dwelling prices are based on the information Statistics Finland receives via a private price monitoring service about transactions in new dwellings made by the largest real estate agents and building contractors and from Statistics Finland own data collection. For house sales indicators, the data used for new multi-unit dwellings is by the Finnish Tax Administration. The time of transaction for new dwellings is the first binding contract in HPI and the change of ownership in house sales indicators as well as in HPI item weights. 

Existing detached houses: The data on transaction prices are obtained from the real estate register of the National Land Survey of Finland. Additionally, the dwelling stock data from the Population Register Centre’s register of buildings and dwellings is also used.

In existing dwellings, the yearly number of sales, average surface area and median price per m2 are used when compiling the yearly transaction value. In new dwellings, the number and average surface area of finished constructions and median price per m2 are used. Subindices - Existing dwellings: The weights for existing dwellings are derived as value-shares of stock of apartments. New dwellings: the weights are the consumption expenditure weights of dwellings purchased.

Tax administrations data on transfer tax.

Monthly data transmission from the Tax Administration and the real estate agents. Monthly data from National Land Survey of Finland and quarterly data on new detached houses from a private price monitoring service. Quarterly data collection on new multi-unit dwellings by Statistics Finland to building contractors that do not report via private price monitoring service. 

See 18.1.

Controls on the quality of the data: Validation is started when data arrives and is imported into database . The validation covers following checks: 1. Prices which are considered to be too big or too small (possible misspelling or contract within the family etc.) 2. Missing characteristics of dwelling is checked (number of rooms, surface areas, year of completion, postal code etc.) 3. Statistics (e.g. number of transactions observed).

See below.

See below.

HPI is a Laspeyres-type price index.

Sub-indices are aggregated to a total HPI according to Laspeyres formula. Finnish HPI consists of three sub-indices: existing single-family houses, existing dwellings in housing companies and new dwellings in housing companies. For existing single-family houses, the elementary aggregates are aggregated using Log-Laspeyres formula, for existing dwellings in housing companies with Törnqvist and these two sub-indices are aggregated to existing dwellings using Laspeyres. Price index for new dwellings is aggregated from elementary aggregates using Laspeyres formula.

Weights are updated annually.

The weight reference period is t-1.

The HPI is calculated as a price change between current quarter and previous year’s last quarter and then chained from previous year’s index to current index using this change.

The sub-indices for existing and newly built dwellings are adjusted for quality changes using hedonic models.

HPI is compiled from three sub-indices which are all based on hedonic repricing. The index methods differ slightly due to different data sources and characteristics etc. In all of these, the index has two different parts, price change unadjusted for quality and a quality adjustment factor.
For the sub-index of existing single-family houses, the dependent variable is logarithmic price per square metre and the explanatory factors are the age of a house, the square of age, abutting a shoreline, floor area and in Greater Helsinki the distance to Helsinki and elsewhere in the country the distance to a big, medium size and small town. All explanatory variables are in a logarithmic form. The shadow prices are calculated based on five years’ data and are updated annually. The quality unadjusted price index is based on unweighted geometric mean.
For the new and existing flats (dwellings in housing companies), the dependent variable is logarithmic price per square metre. For existing dwellings the explanatory variables are floor area and its square root, age of the building and its square root, driving time to the nearest local centre and its square root and whether the dwelling is located on rented or own plot. For new dwellings, the variables are dwelling's floor area, the location of the dwelling and owner of the building lot -dummy. Shadow prices are based on one year's data and are updated annually. The quality unadjusted price indices are based on weighted arithmetic mean.

SPAR method not in use.

Stratification not in use.

See below.

The price of the dwelling is the price in the sale contract (in existing dwellings and multi-unit dwellings). The price index for new single unit houses describes how much the price of building an average single-family house has developed. For the new dwellings in housing companies the price is on the first binding contract.

VAT is included in the price of new dwellings.

Asset transfer tax is not included in the price of dwellings.

The HPI includes only transactions at market prices.

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

Housing cooperatives are covered in the HPI.

Transactions between family members are omitted when possible, as well as price regulated apartments. Transactions with unusually low or high price are omitted as well. 

Multi-object transactions are included, if each apartment has their own price.

Fractional transactions are not included in the HPI.

There is automatic deduction rules for outliers.

There is no grossing-up in case of under-coverage.

No adjustments other than quality adjustment are applied to the HPI data.

None.