RICS

Another group of professionals who are worth asking about house prices are surveyors – it’s their business to value the country’s housing stock, after all. The key representative body of the industry is the Royal Institution of Surveyors – and no prizes for guessing that it too produces a set of house price indices of its own. What makes these worth looking at is the breadth of information you can find, if you did deep enough. As well as simple price information the RICS looks at the stocks of unsold properties on surveyors’ books, at confidence levels in the industry, on the number of buyer enquiries and new instructions. It divides its research down to produce specific reports for rural areas and the lettings world – so the www.rics.org website is a common destination for property owners (or hopeful owners) who want to look forward as well as just looking back.