Beyond the average: patterns in UK price data at the micro level

Lennart Brandt, Natalie Burr and Krisztian Gado

The Bank of England has a 2% annual inflation rate target in the ONS’ consumer prices index. But looking at its 700 item categories, we find that very few prices ever change by 2%. In fact, on a month-on-month basis, only about one fifth of prices change at all. Instead, we observe what economists call ‘sticky prices’: the price of an item will remain fixed for an extended amount of time and then adjust in one large step. We document the time-varying nature of stickiness by looking at the share of price changes and their distribution in the UK microdata. We find a visible discontinuity in price-setting in the first quarter of 2022, which has only partially unwound.

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Five facts about buy-to-let

Philippe Bracke

Buy-to-Let (BTL) investors are taking on an increasingly relevant role in the UK housing market. In this post, I present some initial findings from my ongoing research on BTL. I use data from the England and Wales Land Registry and the Zoopla web portal to find properties that are advertised for rent shortly after being bought. I show that: 1) BTL investors prefer (a) London and (b) flats; 2) BTL investors are more likely to pay cash; 3) BTL transactions are faster; 4) BTL investors buy at a discount; and 5) BTL discounts are larger for (a) Northern regions and (b) big properties.

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