A segmentation study on global real estate market

In the last decade, globalization has increasingly involved the internationalization of services sectors as much as of manufacturing, and the various sub-sectors of the real estate industry have been enthusiastic participants in this global area. Builders, brokerage firms, consulting and services firms, real estate finance firms and property investors have extended their area of operations beyond local markets to a world-wide base. From this point, it is important to understand the global real estate market. The main purpose of this study to determine homogeneous housing markets base on countries where house price indices move together. By clustering the housing markets, managers in multinational corporations can better understand the basis for similarities and differences between countriesí housing markets. With this knowledge, they can select appropriate market areas and formulate efficiently diversified investment portfolios. Clusters also can help academicians, property investors by defining the extent to which results should be generalized to other countries. Properly employed results from one country can be generalized to the entire group of countries sharing a particular variable within the same cluster.