REA Group’s PropTrack joins the house price index race

The data business owned by REA is hoping to tap into the country’s property obsession with a new house price index that aims to give buyers more information.

PropTrack chief executive Melina Cruickshank has hailed the launch of a new property index.

REA Group’s data business PropTrack is pushing deeper into property data services with the launch of a new index tracking monthly changes in residential property prices.

The company, majority owned by News Corp Australia, publisher of The Australian, is aiming to capitalise on the national obsession with home prices, and to draw on the mountains of unique data it collects.

REA gains exclusive insights into the property market from visitation data to realestate.com.au and is planning to expand its offering with more consumer and business products which will assess the housing market.

Property data is one of the hottest fields in real estate with proptech companies gathering and analysing data alongside traditional players like research house CoreLogic and, more recently, property exchange PEXA.

REA’s PropTrack Home Price Index is billed as Australia’s first monthly revised residential property price index and aims to provide unique insights to help buyers and sellers make informed property decisions.

The new tool is a revisionary index which enables a new level of analysis each month using a robust and flexible method, which also allows it to best reflect historical market performance.

Price estimates will be available for houses and units at a national, capital city and rest of state level, in addition to select top performing regions.

PropTrack chief executive Melina Cruickshank said the index launch was a “milestone in the acceleration of our ambitious data strategy and further builds our platform for growth”.

“This is an exciting step forward in PropTrack’s evolution and demonstrates our ongoing commitment to providing customers and consumers with access to the most complete view of the market through unparalleled property data and insights,” she said.

The index will be available on the first day of every month, with the method used to designed to estimate the change in home prices in a way that is not affected by the quality and location of the unique homes that transact in given periods.

Originally published as REA Group’s PropTrack joins the house price index race