Estonia - House Price Index

Dwelling Price Index – expresses the changes in the transaction prices of dwellings purchased by households.

The Dwelling Price Index (DPI) is a Laspeyres type index which covers transactions made with already existing dwellings as well as new dwellings. The prices include land value.

The data source is the Estonian Land Board. The transaction data have been combined with data from the National Register of Construction Works.

For calculations, the geometric mean of the square metre prices of dwellings is used.

DPIs have been compiled for apartments and houses (including detached, semi-detached and terraced houses). To compile these indices, Estonia is geographically divided into three parts: Tallinn; the areas bordering Tallinn, and Tartu and Pärnu cities; and the rest of Estonia (without the aforementioned districts).

To improve the comparability of data, transactions with apartments smaller than 18 m² and bigger than 250 m² were left out. To avoid the inclusion of extreme prices, 2% of transactions with the lowest and the highest square metre prices were cut off. Transactions with apartments in the Old Town of Tallinn were also excluded as too exclusive. All in all, ca 7% of transactions with apartments were excluded from the calculations during the period of 1st quarter 2005 to 2nd quarter 2012.

To calculate the Dwelling Price Index for houses, the data of transactions with no information about dwelling area had to be left out of the further calculations. Transactions in the Old Town of Tallinn were left out as too exclusive. Also, transactions with extreme square metre prices and transactions in Tallinn where the seller was not a household were excluded. All together ca 38% of the transactions with houses were excluded from calculations during the period of 1st quarter 2005 to 2nd quarter 2012.

The weights of the Dwelling Price Index are updated annually. Weights derived from the data of the previous year are used during the entire following year. DPIs have been compiled for apartments and houses (including detached, semi-detached and terraced houses).

In the current year (t) the base prices for the calculation of the DPI are the prices of the fourth quarter of the previous year (t–1).

The DPI is published on the base 2010 = 100. The time series start from the first quarter of 2005.

The Dwelling Price Index is published quarterly in accordance with the release calendar of Statistics Estonia. The DPI was first published on 21 September 2012.

Expect the series to be revised with each update.

Additional information can be found on Statistics Estonia's website.