Clearer picture

The city’s Statistics and Census Bureau (DSEC), in collaboration with the University of Macau, will launch a new ‘Property Price Index’ with 2016 results available next year, aiming to provide homogeneous yearly and quarterly comparisons of the city’s property prices to the public.
The Director of the Department of Industrial, Construction and External Trade Statistics under the DSEC, Wong Weng Seng said during a Friday press conference that the new statistical method uses information starting from 2011 as its base, in order to be more complete and representative, noting that the Financial Services Bureau (DSF) only started its collection of data about average residential transaction prices in 2011.
“Starting from 2011, we have built up an information exchange mechanism with the DSF, DSEC as well as the Land, Public Works and Transport Bureau,” said director Wong.
When asked by reporters whether data from the past years is adequate to accurately be used in statistics, Professor Rose Neng Lai from the University of Macau said that data prior to 2011 might in fact produce less accurate results.
The new index will provide quarterly and yearly homogenous comparisons, which Professer Lai describes as being done by excluding all the characteristic factors that contribute to changes in property prices.
Property price indexes grouped in different characteristic factors – such as net floor area, property age and location – will also be provided in the new index.
Unlike the ‘Climatic Index’, produced by private property agencies, the index by the DSEC will not show the performance of the property market, but will instead provide the trending of prices, said Professor Lai.
Director Wong, meanwhile, stated that the index report will be posted in 2017, and hopes that reports showing monthly, quarterly and yearly results will be introduced.

Highest index rate in 2014
The results so far produced by the new method show that the city’s property prices for the past five years hit a peak in the third quarter of 2014, at an index rate of 257.16, indicating it had increased 1.72 times compared to the first quarter of 2011 (94.47).
The fourth quarter of 2015, the most recent data available, was recorded as hitting 212.39, down 17.4 per cent compared to the highest index value seen in 2014.
In terms of location, properties situated on the peninsula had a property index rate of 215.94 during the fourth quarter of 2015, down 17.9 per cent compared to the highest rate of 263.07 in the second quarter of 2014.
The price index for off-plan properties was the highest in the second quarter of 2014 at 388.91.