Estimating the price of apartments in Tehran using extracted compound variables

Purpose - Housing price is a barometer of a national economy. In recent years, Iran experienced high inflation in its economy, which affects everything, including housing. The purpose of this study is the estimation of the value of residential apartments of Tehran using ordinary least square (OLS) and geographically weighted regression (GWR) methods. Design/methodology/approach - This paper proposed a method for determining the compound variables and used them to estimate and evaluate the prices in the district six of Tehran city. Also, this paper compared the GWR and OLS methods with different types of factors and their influences in house price estimations. Findings - During the high inflation period of the study period, the age of buildings, inflation, parking, storage room and their locations are the most critical factors that affect the price of apartments in district six of Tehran. Besides, compound variables have the most influence on the prediction of the prices. Research limitations/implications - The exact location of the apartments in the study area were unknown. Therefore, the positions are extracted from their addresses. The uncertainty of location forced us to ignore the neighborhood terms in the hedonic method. Practical implications - The exact locations of the apartments in the study area were unknown. Therefore, the positions are extracted from their addresses. The uncertainty of location forced us to ignore the neighborhood terms in the hedonic method. Originality/value - The originality of the proposed method is that it used a different approach to determine the valid variables of the apartment prices. Also, the evaluation of the method showed that the proposed variables are significantly useful.