Private hire and home costs, UK

The Price Index of Private Rents (PIPR) is launched as official statistics in growth and is topic to revisions if methodology enhancements are recognized. Read extra in our Guide to official statistics in growth.

UK House Price Index

HM Land Registry (HMLR) publishes the complete UK House Price Index (HPI) report and month-to-month knowledge. Additionally, the Registers of Scotland publishes UK HPI reports and Land and Property Services Northern Ireland publishes Northern Ireland HPI reports.

UK HPI’s revisions coverage is in Section 4.4 of HMLR’s About the UK House Price Index guidance.

On 20 August 2025, the Office for National Statistics (ONS) launched an enchancment to HPI’s imputation technique for Great Britain, which reduces preliminary overestimation of latest construct estimates in provisional estimates. More element about this strategies enchancment is out there in our recent blog and in Section 4.9 of HMLR’s About the UK House Price Index document.

The ONS and HMLR have been working collaboratively to enhance UK HPI transactions volumes and scale back the scale of revisions. In 2024, HMLR efficiently returned to processing over 40% of the HM Revenue and Customs (HMRC) provisional gross sales estimate for UK HPI’s first estimate (the goal specified within the UK HPI quality and methodology guidance).

UK HPI gross sales quantity estimates for older intervals and new builds stay decrease than historic averages, however proceed to enhance. Users must be conscious that revisions could also be bigger than they’ve been traditionally, and may be aware the higher uncertainty round new construct estimates. The strategies enchancment applied on 20 August 2025 reduces uncertainty in new construct estimates.

We will proceed to watch revisions and establish potential additional strategies for enhancements sooner or later.

Price Index of Private Rents

The reference interval for indexing the PIPR is January 2023, and statistics can be found from January 2015. In March 2025, PIPR protection was expanded to the entire UK and small enhancements had been made to the Great Britain historic sequence by incorporating extra knowledge.

Our Price Index of Private Rents, UK: historic sequence dataset hyperlinks the pre-2015 Index of Private Housing Rental Prices (IPHRP) developments with PIPR developments from 2015 onwards, all the way down to area stage. We advise warning when evaluating pre-2015 developments with later estimates due to the methodology change in January 2015.

Our Private rental costs growth plan summarises our up to date responses and actions taken regarding consumer requests, and descriptions deliberate additional developments regarding PIPR.

Sources for Price Index of Private Rents

Our Quality assurance of administrative knowledge used within the PIPR describes PIPR knowledge sources.

Data assortment for Price Index of Private Rents

In England and Wales, achieved rents knowledge are collected for each new and current tenancies.

In Northern Ireland, rents knowledge are for newly marketed lets.

Scotland rents knowledge are predominantly for marketed new lets, with solely a small proportion based mostly on current lets knowledge. Therefore, value adjustments for current tenancies are largely estimated for Scotland.

Measures regarding in-tenancy hire will increase had been applied in Scotland from September 2022 to March 2025. More element is out there in our PIPR dataset and in Section 10: Data sources and high quality of our March 2025 bulletin. During this era, these measures didn’t apply to the value of latest lets used to estimate the value of current tenancies. Scottish Government statisticians consider that the dearth of knowledge on current tenants, to which these measures beforehand utilized, could have led to overestimation in inventory costs and indices for Scotland throughout this era.

Revisions coverage for Price Index of Private Rents

Northern Ireland rents knowledge aren’t accessible for the most recent two months. For a given Northern Ireland sequence (together with breakdowns), index values for the most recent two months have been estimated by making use of the month-to-month common of the latest-available two-month inflation fee for that sequence to the latest-available index worth for that sequence.

These imputed index values for the most recent two months for Northern Ireland had been aggregated with the corresponding knowledge for Great Britain. We used PIPR weights to supply provisional UK estimates for the most recent two months for every UK sequence (together with UK-level breakdowns).

Each subsequent month, up to date Northern Ireland knowledge are used to revise estimates for the UK, offering a two-month revision interval for the UK sequence in PIPR.

Strengths and limitations

Strengths

The PIPR displays value adjustments for all privately rented properties, together with current tenancies and newly marketed lets.

The PIPR produces costs which might be comparable over time and publishes to an elevated stage of geographic granularity.

Limitations

While mitigation efforts are made, value adjustments at a neighborhood stage may be influenced by the kind and variety of properties collected in any given interval, which can result in volatility. Longer-term developments must be thought-about for lower-level geographic breakdowns, somewhat than month-to-month actions.

Estimates for the City of London and Isles of Scilly aren’t printed due to low assortment volumes.

Because of variations in knowledge assortment and housing coverage, warning is suggested when evaluating estimates for Scotland and Northern Ireland with different areas in England and Wales, and inside Scotland. More data is out there in our PIPR high quality and methodology Information (QMI).

Future developments

Following our request for a quality-focused evaluation of the PIPR, the Office for Statistics Regulation (OSR) printed their Spotlight on Quality Assessment: PIPR report in October 2024. Our Private rental costs growth plan outlines our progress in direction of assembly these necessities and plans for additional motion.

Contact us at [email protected].

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