What is the Home Price Index?

The Home Price Index is the only official publication on changes in home market prices. The index is published by the Central Bureau of Statistics (CBS) every month on the 15^th of the month, at 6:30 pm (or on Fridays at 2:30 pm, if the 15th falls on Saturday or on a holiday).

Although the Home Price Index is published in conjunction with the Consumer Price Index, it is not included in this index. The reason for this is that from an economic point of view, buying an apartment is not considered a consumption act but rather an investment. This is in contrast to rent prices, or home maintenance prices, which are included in the Consumer Price Index.

The data on which the Home Price Index is based are transactions recorded to the Israel Tax Authorities, which all home sellers and buyers in Israel are obligated to report. Each publication expresses a monthly rate of change in home prices, based on data collected over a two-month period, relative to the two-month period that began and ended a month earlier. The publication date is 45 days after the end of the measurement period. In other words, on December 15, the index based on September–October transaction data will be published. The reason for the difference between the date of publication and the period to which it relates is that it takes the authorities several weeks to collect, verify, and enter the date into the databases. This, of course, has a substantial impact on the significance of the information, since the index published says nothing about the current price trend in the housing market, but about the price trend as it was two or three months ago.

The Home Price Index published on December 15, 2022, showed a monthly increase in prices (September-October 22 compared with August-September 22) of 1.2 percent in the housing market, and an annual increase of 20.3 percent, the highest figure in a decade.