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A Comparison of Statistical and Machine Learning Algorithms for Predicting Rents in the San Francisco Bay Area

Paul Waddell, Arezoo Besharati-Zadeh

arXiv 26 Nov 2020 · Econometrics · 3 citations (OpenAlex)

arXiv:2011.14924 · PDF · DOI · OpenAlex · Extracted main text

Abstract

Urban transportation and land use models have used theory and statistical modeling methods to develop model systems that are useful in planning applications. Machine learning methods have been considered too 'black box', lacking interpretability, and their use has been limited within the land use and transportation modeling literature. We present a use case in which predictive accuracy is of primary importance, and compare the use of random forest regression to multiple regression using ordinary least squares, to predict rents per square foot in the San Francisco Bay Area using a large volume of rental listings scraped from the Craigslist website. We find that we are able to obtain useful predictions from both models using almost exclusively local accessibility variables, though the predictive accuracy of the random forest model is substantially higher.

Citation extraction

16
references
19
in-text mentions
16
distinct cited
3
self-citations
3,908
main-text words

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Most heavily cited references

The works this paper leans on most, across its whole bibliography — not restricted to papers in our corpus. Ranked by composite intensity, which combines how often a work is mentioned, how many sections mention it, and how much of that falls in the main text rather than the appendix.

ReferenceIntensityMentionsSectionsMain text
1Leo Breiman (2001) Random forests0.84333100%
2Geoff Boeing and Paul Waddell (2017) New Insights into Rental Housing Markets across the United States: Web Scraping and Analyzing Craigslist Rental Listings self0.64422100%
3Marjan Ceh, Milan Kilibarda, Anka Lisec, and Branislav Bajat (2018) Estimating the Performance of Random Forest versus Multiple Regression for Predicting Prices of the Apartments0.40511100%
4Ulrike Grömping (2009) Variable Importance Assessment in Regression: Linear Regression versus Random Forest0.40511100%
5Kelvin J. Lancaster (1966) A New Approach to Consumer Theory0.40511100%
6Geoff Boeing (2017) OSMnx: New methods for acquiring, constructing, analyzing, and visualizing complex street networks0.40511100%
7Leo Breiman, J. H. (Jerome H.) Friedman, Richard A. Olshen, and Char… Classification and regression trees0.40511100%
8Fletcher Foti, Paul Waddell, and Dennis Luxen (2012) A generalized computational framework for accessibility: from the pedestrian to the metropolitan scale self0.40511100%
9Robert Gillingham and David Lund (1970) A Hedonic Approach to Rent Determination0.40511100%
10William H Greene (2002) Econometric Analysis0.40511100%

Showing the top 10 of 16 scored citations.