House Price Indices Are Misleading You — Here's Why, According to the Daily Mirror

Why Every House Price Index Says Something Different

Each month, several different house price indices land in the news, and they rarely agree with each other. Nationwide and Halifax base theirs on mortgage approvals among their own customers, excluding cash buyers entirely. Rightmove measures what sellers are asking for, not what buyers actually pay. Only the Land Registry index covers the whole market — every completed sale, mortgaged or cash — but by the time that data is published, one broker quoted alongside Darryl in the Mirror called it "an archaeological study."

The Halifax index itself is also being phased out under its own name — Lloyds, its parent bank, has confirmed it will become the "Lloyds House Price Index" going forward, with Friday's release one of the last under the old branding.

My Take — Published in the Daily Mirror This Morning

What This Means Practically

Other brokers quoted in the same piece made the same point from different angles. Thomas George of Mansell McTaggart put it plainly: a single property "can appear to be worth £270,000 or £376,000 depending solely on which index you open." Evren Ergin of ValuQ agreed the Land Registry is the most trustworthy of the lot, but stressed it's still "a whole nation in one number" — and no one lives in one number.

If you're selling, an index telling you the market is "up 1.2%" doesn't mean your specific house is worth 1.2% more than last year — condition, location, and even which side of the street you're on can swing value by 20% or more. If you're buying, the same logic applies in reverse: don't let a headline talk you out of an offer that's fair for the actual property in front of you.

What About Bad Credit Borrowers?

This matters more than usual if you're remortgaging with any adverse credit on file. Lenders base your loan-to-value on a surveyor's valuation of your actual property, not on a national index — but if you've gone into a remortgage conversation expecting a headline-driven valuation and the surveyor comes back lower, that can be the difference between qualifying for a mainstream product and needing a specialist lender.

Going in with a realistic, locally-grounded expectation of your property's value — rather than one built on last night's headline — means fewer surprises during underwriting, which matters even more when your credit history is already adding friction to the process.

The Bottom Line

Read the indices for the direction of travel — up, down, or flat — not as a personal valuation. As Stephen Perkins of Yellow Brick Mortgages put it in the same piece: "the figure that matters most is what comparable properties are actually achieving in your local market." A good local agent or a proper surveyor's valuation will always beat a national average for knowing what your specific home is worth.

If you're weighing up a purchase, sale, or remortgage and want a clear-eyed read on what it means for your situation specifically — not a national headline — WhatsApp me and I'll talk you through it.

I'll keep sharing my take here whenever I'm quoted in the press — it's usually the fastest way to cut through a misleading headline. If you want to know what your situation actually looks like, not what a national average says, WhatsApp me and I'll walk you through it.

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