LONDON (Reuters) - House price inflation looks set to slow sharply in the coming months as mortgage lenders tighten their lending criteria in reponse to the credit squeeze.

With several new reports every week, policymakers and economists have to trawl through a mass of data to pick out patterns and establish what is really happening in the market.

Following is a guide to the main house price indicators and the importance analysts place on them.

HALIFAX

The monthly price index from Halifax, the nation's largest mortgage lender and part of HBOS, tracks a seasonally adjusted standardised house price based on mortgages agreed with buyers. The Halifax has a mortgage market share of just over 20 percent and the index is typically based on 15,000 transactions.

It is the longest-running monthly series on house prices going back to January 1983 and is considered particularly timely because it uses numbers from the mortgage approvals stage.

NATIONWIDE

A monthly, seasonally adjusted measure based on mortgage approvals with the Nationwide Building Society, which has around 8 percent share of the UK market. The data track a representative house price over time rather than an average.

It is the UK's longest unbroken series of house price data with figures going back to 1952 on a quarterly basis.