States house price index ‘is worthless’

Monday 17th October 2005, 12:00AM BST.

THE house prices index compiled by the States Statistics Unit ‘is not worth the paper it is written on’, according to a former president of the Jersey Estate Agents Association.

Wendy Arrowsmith , who has recently retired, says the sample of transactions from which the survey is compiled in the Island is just too small to be accurate.

Mrs Arrowsmith, who ran Arrowsmith Estates from offices in St John and has retired after 22 years, said an agent would have a reliable idea of whether prices were rising and would know what was selling and at what price.

‘In the UK statisticians have a huge sample of transactions to draw from and are therefore able to make far more accurate predictions.

Not so in Jersey, I feel,’ she said.

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