Segmenting the Paris residential market using a Principal Component Analysis

This paper aims to generate homogeneous submarkets in terms of price behaviour for Paris through a Principal Component Analysis. The database, which is provided by the Chambre des Notaires, includes cases spread over a 17 year period, that is from 1990 to 2006. This period offers three sub-periods during which prices are going down, recovering and booming. For each transaction, housing descriptors are available to construct the hedonic index. As most of large cities, Paris is divided in administrative boroughs (“arrondissements”) and neighbourhoods ‘”quartiers” where prices evolve differently during slump, recovery and boom periods. Prices moves over time are measured using hedonic indices. A cluster analysis highlights a segmentation according the size effect and price volatility. It also shows that over or under-performance of various districts compared with the global index is dependent on the period. In particular, one of the major contributions of this research is to highlight the existence of a twofold residential dynamics in the Paris region, with the central boroughs clearly parting from outlying ones with respect to apartment price appreciation over time.