Predicting Social Inequality in Poland Using Price Dispersion on the Real Estate Market

Abstract

Measuring and predicting price dispersion on the real estate market is an important issue for both investors and policymakers. Price dispersion in the housing market can be seen as an additional dimension for measuring social inequality and one of the main goals of public policies that focus on life satisfaction and the accumulation of permanent wealth. The article considers the Polish real estate market and proposes the prediction methods of four measures of dispersion. They are based on quantiles and allow overall measurement of dispersion. In the prediction of dispersion measures the plug-in predictors utylizing longitudinal mixed models are proposed. Furthermore, the ex ante prediction accuracy measure called the quantile of absolute prediction errors (QAPE) is assessed using the residual bootstrap estimators. QAPE allows for a comprehensive description of the distribution of prediction errors, thus fostering discussion of possible various market scenarios.