Housing Market Activity Methodology

Housing market activity composite indicators, mortgage and construction source differences, rebasing, smoothing, provisional months, and comparability limits.

Indicator goal

Housing activity matters for furniture markets because changes in home purchases, mortgage availability, construction starts, and building permits often precede furnishing decisions. The goal of the indicator family is to give market analysts a consistent monthly view of whether housing conditions are becoming more or less supportive for home-related demand.

Each country series is expressed as an index with 2019 = 100. Values above 100 indicate activity above the 2019 baseline, while values below 100 indicate weaker activity than the baseline period.

Method typeMonthly composite index for housing-linked furniture demand signals

Index base2019 average = 100 for each component before weighting

Typical componentsNew mortgage lending plus residential construction permits or starts

Update frequencyMonthly, subject to national source release calendars and revisions

Main limitationsComposite-source differences, source revisions, provisional months, seasonal effects, and non-identical national housing systems

Composite construction

Furnilytics combines housing-finance and construction-side signals where suitable source data is available. The standard structure uses house-price-adjusted new housing-loan activity as the larger component and residential permits or construction activity as the smaller component. Components are first indexed to their 2019 average and then combined with fixed weights. The house-price adjustment keeps the finance component closer to real buyer activity by reducing the effect of higher dwelling prices on nominal mortgage values.

The index is not intended to equal the number of housing transactions. It is a market-activity proxy that blends financing conditions and residential supply momentum into a single monthly series.

Country source differences

The exact source mix differs by country because housing finance, construction and transaction datasets are not published with identical coverage or timeliness across markets.

AustriaHouse-price-adjusted ECB MIR new housing loans and Eurostat quarterly residential building permits converted to monthly frequency; the mortgage input is smoothed with a 3-month moving average before rebasing and weighting.

BulgariaHouse-price-adjusted new mortgage lending and Eurostat quarterly residential building permits expanded to a monthly construction signal.

CzechiaHouse-price-adjusted new mortgage lending and Eurostat quarterly residential building permits expanded to a monthly construction signal.

GermanyHouse-price-adjusted ECB MIR new housing loans and Eurostat residential building permits.

FranceHouse-price-adjusted ECB MIR new housing loans and Eurostat residential building permits.

HungaryHouse-price-adjusted new mortgage lending and residential building permits, indexed to the 2019 baseline and combined into a monthly activity proxy.

SpainHouse-price-adjusted ECB MIR new housing loans and Eurostat monthly residential building permits; the mortgage input is smoothed with a 3-month moving average before rebasing and weighting.

LithuaniaHouse-price-adjusted ECB MIR pure new housing loans and Eurostat quarterly residential building permits converted to monthly frequency; the mortgage input is smoothed with a 3-month moving average before rebasing and weighting.

ItalyHouse-price-adjusted ECB MIR new housing loans and ISTAT residential permit data; the mortgage input is smoothed with a 3-month moving average and the composite is seasonally adjusted.

NetherlandsHouse-price-adjusted ECB MIR new housing loans and Eurostat monthly residential building permits; the mortgage input is smoothed with a 3-month moving average before rebasing and weighting.

PolandHouse-price-adjusted ECB MIR new housing loans reconstructed from total and initial-rate-fixation buckets, combined with Statistics Poland BDL residential permit data; the mortgage input is smoothed with a 3-month moving average and the newest overlapping month is excluded.

RomaniaHouse-price-adjusted new mortgage lending and residential building permits, indexed to the 2019 baseline and combined into a monthly activity proxy. After a break in the mortgage source, the series is extended with a 3-month smoothed residential permit signal level-linked to the last reliable composite month.

SwedenHouse-price-adjusted ECB MIR new housing loans in Swedish kronor and Eurostat monthly residential building permits; the mortgage input is smoothed with a 3-month moving average before rebasing and weighting.

United KingdomBank of England mortgage approvals for house purchase and ONS residential dwelling starts; the mortgage input is smoothed with a 3-month moving average.

United StatesHouse-price-adjusted FRED mortgage-originations data, monthly housing transactions for temporal disaggregation, and residential building permits.

Smoothing and provisional months

Some housing-finance series can move sharply from month to month because of refinancing waves, policy effects, reporting timing, or temporary source distortions. Where this materially improves readability and comparability, Furnilytics applies a light 3-month moving average to the mortgage input before rebasing and weighting. This is currently used for Austria, Spain, Lithuania, Italy, Poland, the Netherlands, Sweden and the United Kingdom.

For Romania, the ECB mortgage source shows a reporting break after June 2023. From the first month after that break, Furnilytics extends the activity indicator with a 3-month smoothed residential permit signal, level-linked to the final reliable mortgage-and-permit composite observation.

Most mortgage-value inputs are adjusted with a house price index before indexing. This prevents periods of rapid dwelling-price inflation from looking like stronger housing activity when the underlying number of buyer-finance events has not increased by the same amount. The United Kingdom series uses mortgage approvals rather than mortgage value, so it does not need the same house-price adjustment.

Bulgaria, Czechia, Lithuania and Austria use Eurostat quarterly residential permit data converted to a monthly construction signal. When months extend beyond the latest available quarterly permit observation, the construction component is carried forward using mortgage month-on-month movement until the next quarterly permit release becomes available.

Poland also excludes the newest overlapping month from the public composite. This reduces the risk that a visible final-point jump is caused by provisional release timing between mortgage and permit sources rather than an established housing-market signal.

Interpretation and limitations

A rising housing market activity index usually points to improving conditions for housing-linked demand, while a falling index suggests weaker support from the residential cycle. For furniture markets, the indicator should be read alongside retail market size, consumer confidence, online search trends and country-specific housing context.

Cross-country comparisons should focus on broad direction and relative position against each country's own 2019 baseline. They should not be interpreted as a direct ranking of housing transaction volumes, mortgage balances, or construction units.

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