I refer to the article in the Business & Money section of The Sunday Times of Malta (December 28) under the heading ‘Property rises by 8.9 per cent’.

The first thing that draws my attention when looking at the multi-coloured accompanying graph is that over the past four years (January 2010 to circa April 2014), property prices remained the same on average.

That means they have hovered about the horizontal zero line.

One must also keep in mind that this graph has been based on asking prices (referred to in the article as advertised price index).

These prices have been created in their bulk by estate agents, not the best of sources, since they have a direct interest in the selling of the property, as pointed out by the Chamber of Architects president and vice president on the front page article of the Classified section of this newspaper recently.