Where to get actual sale prices?

According to the ABS, finance approvals in March were 19 per cent below the October peak, while flat against February. But it’s now a week into May. Building approvals have been flat, with two big spikes, for about three years and yesterday’s figures confirmed a slightly declining trend. But within that, house approvals were higher.

Meanwhile, actual credit growth remains at record levels and median house prices have not fallen, according to the data (at least three months old).

And then there were Sydney auction clearances last weekend – down to 32.8 per cent. But auctions represent only about 20 per cent of Sydney real estate sales: 80 per cent of the market is a complete mystery. Auction volumes are down, but that’s because there are more private sales. So Australian monetary policy is being set according to a hotch-potch of out-of-date and tangential data and quarter-truths about real estate. The biggest investment decision in most people’s lives is being made on the same basis.

How can the disgraceful state of information on the property market in Australia be allowed to continue? Because no one is responsible for fixing it and almost no one has a commercial incentive to do so.

There are, in fact, two projects under way to improve the state of information about real estate, one in Canberra and one in Victoria.

In Canberra, there is http://www.allhomes.com.au, a website which is both a property listing and data publishing vehicle. As well as houses for sale, it has a free data base containing all ACT sales since 1991, by address and with descriptions of the houses. It means someone thinking about buying a house in Canberra can find out all the sales of that particular property for the past 13 years, plus all sales in the same street or suburb.

It is a fantastic service, set up by a Sydney-based internet entrepreneur named Don Collis who was house-hunting in Sydney five years ago and couldn’t believe the appalling state of information available. He hired database expert Jan Mitchell and located the venture in Canberra because the city is a more manageable size than Sydney.

The only problem with Mitchell’s website is that the information comes from the Government, which means it is based on settlements rather than sales, and that means it is 30 to 90 days old. She does collect weekly sales data from agents (about 95 per cent of Canberra agents) but doesn’t publish it until it’s checked against the government data.

In Victoria, the Real Estate Institute, led by Enzo Raimondo, is going a step further.

The REIV now collects weekly sales data from about 700 of its 748 members, but this is not available to the public, and in any case another 2000 agents in Victoria selling houses are not institute members.

The REIV is setting up a call centre to ring all Victorian agents, not just members, every weekend to collect comprehensive sales data. In about a month, Raimondo says he will launch a public website providing fully up-to-date information on every real estate transaction in the state.

The only thing missing will be the house addresses because of legal advice that it would breach federal privacy laws. Perhaps Canberra’s allhomes.com.au doesn’t breach those laws because the information is published after settlement, when it is on the public register.

I rang most other real estate institutes around Australia yesterday to see if there was any interest in following suit. Queensland is watching Victoria closely and if it works, will do the same. WA collects data from the Government and provides it to members, but not the public. ACT is working with The Canberra Times to come up with a competitor to allhomes.com.au – apparently because Jan Mitchell refused to join the institute.

The Real Estate Institute of NSW collects no data from anywhere and has no plans whatsoever to do so. Australian Property Monitors and Residex collect it from the Government after settlement and sell it.