“Location, Location, Location”: Fluctuations in Real Estate Market Values after COVID-19 and the War in Ukraine Based on Econometric and Spatial Analysis, Random Forest, and Multivariate Regression

Abstract

In this research, the authors aim to detect the marginal appreciation of construction and neighbourhood characteristics of property prices at three different time points: before the COVID-19 pandemic, two years after the first COVID-19 alert but before the War in Ukraine, and one year after the outbreak of the War. The marginal appreciations of the building’s features are analysed for a pilot case study in Northern Italy using a Random Forest feature importance analysis and a Multivariate Regression. Several techniques are integrated into this study, such as computer programming in Python language, multi-parametric value assessment techniques, feature selection procedures, and spatial analysis. The results may represent an interesting ongoing monitoring of how these anomalous events affect the buyer’s willingness to pay for specific characteristics of the buildings, with particular attention to the location features of the neighbourhood and accessibility.