Beware of median prices for your suburb when valuing your home Home-owners all over the country are watching the value of their property soar. But just how big a gold mine do you think you're sitting on? Be careful about relying on house price survey figures for your suburb. The figures are usually based on movements in median house prices. The median is simply the middle price of sales that non profit debt consolidation non profit debt consolidation occurred during the period surveyed, so it's easy to get the impression that prices are soaring across the board. BIS Shrapnel says that the median price can be artificially inflated by several factors. A lot of new building activity or renovations in an area may make an impact, for example. Conversely, if there have been a lot of sales at the lower end of the market, such as due to the home equity loans 3 75 non profit debt consolidation First Home Buyer's grant, the median price may be compressed. BIS suggests that people look at individual sales of similar properties over a period of time. Residex concurs and says that people comparing median house price data should look first at the number of sales that have gone into producing the figures. Residex also uses the strategy of examining pairs of sales on the same property and calculating the rate of vehicle loans non profit debt consolidation growth between the two sales. The rate of growth isn't then influenced by factors such as new building activity or renovations. The resulting growth figure may be quite a different one from the median house price growth for the same area, sometimes by as much as 10 per cent. Home buyers should just use median house prices as starting points when trying to gauge an area's growth, particularly if they're investing reward credit cards non profit debt consolidation for capital growth.