Finding out what is really happening in the residential property market is a good example, where this lack of transparency causes utter confusion amongst the general public. The market is going up, the market is collapsing. Nobody knows . . . and in the end, the market stagnates, not always because of any obvious economic reason but because of confusion.

For years, the same talking heads have been wheeled out to give their opinions on the property market, invariably giving a positive spin to what is essentially a negative circle . . . selling houses to ourselves is never going to work in the long term.

The statistics quoted are not really questioned in detail and come from their own companies, yet are frequently paraded on national radio and in the press. They have a message to spread and if the facts and the message don't exactly add up, then the message will win.

The decision to sell a property is a significant event and a stressful time in many peoples' lives. It is probably the largest transaction which someone will complete. Get it wrong and you could be in serious "nancial trouble for years. More stress is added by the guesswork involved in not knowing what the market is doing, whether prices are rising (good time to sell, but bad time to buy) or falling (bad time to sell, good time to buy). It is incredible that opinion, speculation, rumour and gossip . . . in other words, sentiment . . . are the guiding forces of the ordinary house vendor or buyer.

As we have seen over the years, property values can easily rise on sentiment, but they can fall even faster on sentiment too.

This is dangerous and wrong . . . property values should rise and fall on facts. The problem is the facts are not really available.

A solution to this problem is the creation of a residential property transaction database. This would be an official record of the actual transaction price of each and every residential property in the country, held by the local authority, available free online and broken down by location, type of dwelling, number of square metres and age of property.

With this database, the general public can access the true facts and figures, make comparisons and determine for themselves what is happening in the market. They then make a decision to buy or sell based upon hard data, rather then chance and confusion. It takes sentiment out of the equation and brings transparency into the picture. And who can argue against transparency, unless of course there's something to hide.

A national database of general prices would not suf"ce. Such a database needs to be specific. House prices vary considerably from county to county, and even within counties, and postcodes.

Different house types too have different values, so the more speci"c the information the better, and the more considered the decisions made based on the database.

If we operate in a free market (and what's more this is supposedly a good thing), what are we afraid of? Let's make it truly free, by providing the information to the public so the maths can be sorted from the message. In that way the market will be based on the free will, facts and actions of the population, not on the opinion, spin and messages of the few.