Introduction

This presentation analyzes the housing prices in West Roxbury, Boston through the freely available data on properties. The aim is to establish relevant factors that determine the prices of houses.

Distribution of Property Values

• The majority of the properties fall between $300K and $450K.

• The prevailing homes in this price range are 3 and 4 bedroom homes.

• Homes with more bedrooms have a slightly higher total value but are less numerous.

• The mean value of the properties in $392.69K

Property Value Over Time

• No defined increasing trend of average property value by build year.

• There are ups and downs in values, very old and very new homes.

• Implies that age is not the only factor that defines worth — could be associated with location or remodelling.

Living Area and Total Value

• High positive correlation: bigger houses have higher value.

• Regression line assures a linear increase in value by square foot.

• There are outliers (e.g. large homes with unexpectedly low value), which indicates the presence of other affecting factors.

Bedrooms and Bathrooms

• The highest average values belong to homes with 3 -4 bedrooms and 1- 2 full bathrooms.

• Uncommon combinations (e.g. a high number of bedrooms and a low number of bathrooms) will reflect lower values.

• Implies that bedroom-bathroom ratios are most favorable to value.

Total Bathrooms vs Value

• Every extra bathroom increases average value considerably.

• The largest increase was between 1 and 2 bathrooms.

• Beyond 3 bathrooms, Plateau begins to be reached -diminishing returns.

Fireplaces and Value

• The largest proportion of value is offered by homes with 1 fireplace.

• The increases in value between 2 and 3 fireplaces and between 3 and 4 fireplaces are significant and minor, respectively, or even negative. This could be evidence of a ceiling effect, in which the incremental value of fireplaces leveled off.

• Single fire places seem to have become a standard value addition in most houses.

Conclusion

• The best indicators of property value are - Living Area and number of Bathrooms.
• Less often seen, but with a definite value added, are such features as fireplaces and recent remodeling.
• The age of property does not linearly affect the results, but it interplays with others (e.g., location, renovations).
• Moderate plans (e.g. 3-4 bedrooms, 2+ bathrooms) have the best ratio of price/performance.
• Multi factor analysis makes clear that no particular feature dominates price-value is the result of the bundle of space, amenities, and upgrades.

References:

• Reisanar. (n.d.). West Roxbury housing data [Data set]. GitHub. https://github.com/reisanar/datasets/blob/master/WestRoxbury.csv
• Wickham, H. (2016). ggplot2: Elegant Graphics for Data Analysis. Springer.
• R Core Team. (2024). R: A language and environment for statistical computing. R Foundation for Statistical Computing.