Mexico's Deputy Finance Minister, Alejandro Werner, said, earlier this week, that the government plans to introduce a price index for Mexico houses.

He told Bloomberg news that the new index would measure house prices using a technique similar to the index co-created by Yale professor and economist Robert Shiller.

In an interview in New York published by the news agency yesterday, Werner said the index will "provide better pricing information to financial markets and offer a new tool to develop and hedge financial products linked to mortgages"

Werner told Bloomberg, "To give more support to the housing market and to financial products associated with housing, we’ll be introducing a price index for housing in Mexico."

Mexico's stock exchange already has Habita, an index tracking the value of the six largest house builders' shares traded on its market, but no direct index for Mexico house prices currently exists.

Robert Shiller, chief economist at MacroMarkets LLC and a professor at Yale University, and Karl Case, an economics professor at Wellesley College, developed their joint technique for calculating such a house price index based on research from the 1980s.

In a phone interview with Bloomberg, Case said having a housing price index "is a major asset that drives consumer spending and that matters for the mortgage market. If you have more data that prices have been volatile in the past, then you have more data to make a rational decision."

The news will be welcomed by real estate sellers, buyers and agents that seek a reliable benchmark for pricing Mexico houses.

For more about buying homes see our information on Mexico houses.