In recent years there has been a growing interest in the process of urban economic development and the role of housing markets in this process is as essential as it is obvious. In order to make progress towards providing answers to some of the important questions relating to the development of towns, it is necessary to try to obtain more precise information on trends in house prices, the level and structure of housing demand and the character of the supply side of the markets. Studies of local housing markets, however, have been constrained by the lack of reliable data on the most important variables and are, therefore, characteristically qualitative and descriptive. Our main objective, therefore, when embarking on the study described below, was to obtain reliable data on which to base analyses of local housing markets.