The author has been described by News Ltd as an "iconoclast", "Svengali", a pollie's "economist muse", and "pungently accurate". Fairfax says he is a "Renaissance man" and "one of Australia’s most respected analysts." Stephen Koukoulas concludes that he is "85% right", and "would make a great Opposition leader." Terry McCrann claims the author thinks "‘nuance’ is a trendy village in the south of France", but can be "scintillating" when he thinks "clearly". The ACTU reckons he’s "an enigma wrapped in a Bloomberg terminal, wrapped in some apparently well-honed abs."

Wednesday, February 29, 2012

Total return housing indices--getting facts right

A punk blogger linked to by Stephen Koukoulas suggested that RP Data and Rismark only recently (ie, last year) started publishing a "total return" accumulation index for Australian housing that includes capital gains and rents. This is way wrong--they've been sending them to subscribers for at least 3 years (I have not checked, but it could be longer). These are the "trading" indices that are used for developing financial derivatives. I think the blogger got confused by the fact that RP Data only started including the total return numbers in the monthly media release last year.
at 8:30 PM