A continuous index of new home prices from the present to 1830 is created by performing a series of calculations upon the real estate price reports of the Census Bureau, Bureau of Labor and Statistics, Long, Gottlieb and Riggleman. A yearly or monthly reverse percentage change in new home prices is found by considering the price data of a future time period and earlier time period. Calculations generated from a more recent or subsequent price report are used to seed calculations for analysis of an older or preceding price report. In order to combine price reports with differing metrics and scales, the disclosed system works backwards in time and uses methods tailored to characteristics of each price report.