Uzbekistan revises housing price index with IMF-backed methodology

Uzbekistan has revised its approach to calculating the housing price index, effective from the second quarter of 2026, by adopting a new methodology developed with the International Monetary Fund's technical assistance. This update incorporates hedonic regression analysis and broadens the index's scope to include private residences, aligning national statistical practices with global benchmarks.

The National Statistics Committee confirmed that the revised methodology adheres to international statistical standards. A significant modification is the implementation of hedonic regression, a technique that assesses housing values based on attributes such as floor area, geographical placement, room count, floor level, and other property characteristics. This marks the first time private houses have been incorporated into the index.

Figures for the second quarter of 2026 indicate a 1.3% quarter-on-quarter increase and a 3.9% year-on-year rise in apartment prices in Tashkent. Newly constructed apartments in the capital saw a 5% price increase compared to the same period last year.

Conversely, private house prices in Tashkent experienced a 0.7% decline from the previous quarter, though they remained 1.2% higher than a year prior. Outside the capital, private house prices grew by 2.8% during the quarter but were 2.7% lower than in the second quarter of 2025.

Nationwide, the primary housing market registered a 0.7% quarter-on-quarter increase and a 7.1% year-on-year increase. The secondary market, meanwhile, saw increases of 1.6% quarter-on-quarter and 4.2% year-on-year.

The committee clarified that the index relies on advertised property prices rather than actual transaction values. For Tashkent, the entire database is sourced from listings on OLX.uz. In other regions, OLX.uz contributes 48% of the data, with the remaining 52% gathered from other publicly available sources. During the first half of 2026, approximately 150,000 property listings were recorded each quarter across the country.

The committee also stated that there are no current plans to publish average prices per square meter for either the primary or secondary housing markets, or broken down by region.

Previously, Uzbekistan reported over 34,300 escrow-based real estate and vehicle transactions in July 2026, including 16,035 property deals, as the nation continues to expand transparent digital mechanisms for property transactions.