The country ’ s pioneer house price index has been unveiled by the Roland Igbinoba Real Foundation for Housing and Urban Development , Nigerian Mortgage Refinance Company , Lekki Gardens and BusinessDAY Media Limited. The Roland Igbinoba House Price Index is expected to be a tool that measures changes in single family home prices across designated markets in the country , as well as reflect areas where some values
are increasing or decreasing.

It is also expected to provide necessary information for individuals to make decisions of when to purchase a house , where and even what type of house to buy. The Founder , Roland Igbinoba Real Foundation for Housing and Urban Development , Mr. Roland
Igbinoba , said the house price index was a variant of the weighted average or median method . Igbinoba said , “ The approach adopted in calculating the RI Index is that of the Laspeyres Index . A Laspeyres house price index calculates the weighted average change in prices over a period for fixed types of houses drawn from some base period.

“ It compares the total cost of purchasing a specific type of house in the base period with the total cost of purchasing the same type in other periods. An index of these costs is then constructed , taking the quantity of each house listed for sale in the base period as weight .”

According to him , the index will help to reflect both the relative costs of production and the relative utilities to purchasers as it measures changes in single-family home prices across Lagos and Abuja for a start .

He added that the index reflected areas where home values were increasing or decreasing and could provide necessary information to make decision of when to purchase a house, where and even what type of house to buy as well as help developers to know and gauge market affordability in different locations across the cities where the index currently covered . Igbinoba said , “ For the RI Index , we adopted a stratification approach to deal with the issue of changes in the composition of houses sold every quarter. Houses are stratified into three , four and five bedrooms ; other types of house with more than five bedrooms or less than three bedrooms are not considered in this report .

“ Due to lack of data sources in the country, the prices of houses listed for sale every month are collected from different sources . The median price of house in each stratum every month is obtained. The average of the three median prices per quarter is also obtained . This average of median price is then used as the average price of houses in each stratum .”

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