IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/kof/wpskof/15-372.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

Think national, forecast local: A case study of 71 German urban housing markets

Author

Listed:
  • Konstantin A. Kholodilin
  • Boriss Siliverstovs

Abstract

In this paper, we evaluate the forecasting ability of 145 indicators and ten types of forecast combination schemes to predict housing prices and rents in 71 German cities. We are interested in whether local business confidence indicators facilitate substantial improvements of the forecasts, given the local nature of the real- estate markets. The forecast accuracy of different predictors is tested in a framework of a quasi out-of-sample forecasting. Its results are quite heterogeneous. No single indicator appears to dominate all the others for all cities and market segments. However, there are several predictors that are especially useful, namely price-to-rent ratios, the business confidence at the national level, and consumer surveys. We also find that combinations of individual forecasts are consistently selected among the top forecasting models/approaches. However, given a rather small sample size in our recursive forecasting exercise, the optimal combination weights is only possible to detect when using full-sample estimation information. On average, the forecast improvements attain about 20%, measured by a reduction in RMSFE, compared to the naive models. In separate cases, however, the magnitude of improvement is about 40%.

Suggested Citation

  • Konstantin A. Kholodilin & Boriss Siliverstovs, 2015. "Think national, forecast local: A case study of 71 German urban housing markets," KOF Working papers 15-372, KOF Swiss Economic Institute, ETH Zurich.
  • Handle: RePEc:kof:wpskof:15-372
    DOI: 10.3929/ethz-a-010385518
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://dx.doi.org/10.3929/ethz-a-010385518
    Download Restriction: no

    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.3929/ethz-a-010385518?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    Other versions of this item:

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Marcellino, Massimiliano & Stock, James H. & Watson, Mark W., 2006. "A comparison of direct and iterated multistep AR methods for forecasting macroeconomic time series," Journal of Econometrics, Elsevier, vol. 135(1-2), pages 499-526.
    2. an de Meulen, Philipp & Micheli, Martin & Schmidt, Torsten, 2011. "Forecasting House Prices in Germany," Ruhr Economic Papers 294, RWI - Leibniz-Institut für Wirtschaftsforschung, Ruhr-University Bochum, TU Dortmund University, University of Duisburg-Essen.
    3. Timmermann, Allan, 2006. "Forecast Combinations," Handbook of Economic Forecasting, in: G. Elliott & C. Granger & A. Timmermann (ed.), Handbook of Economic Forecasting, edition 1, volume 1, chapter 4, pages 135-196, Elsevier.
    4. Wenzel, Lars, 2013. "Forecasting regional growth in Germany: A panel approach using business survey data," HWWI Research Papers 133, Hamburg Institute of International Economics (HWWI).
    5. Clark, Todd E. & West, Kenneth D., 2007. "Approximately normal tests for equal predictive accuracy in nested models," Journal of Econometrics, Elsevier, vol. 138(1), pages 291-311, May.
    6. Capistrán, Carlos & Timmermann, Allan, 2009. "Forecast Combination With Entry and Exit of Experts," Journal of Business & Economic Statistics, American Statistical Association, vol. 27(4), pages 428-440.
    7. Harvey, David I & Leybourne, Stephen J & Newbold, Paul, 1998. "Tests for Forecast Encompassing," Journal of Business & Economic Statistics, American Statistical Association, vol. 16(2), pages 254-259, April.
    8. repec:zbw:rwirep:0294 is not listed on IDEAS
    9. Harvey, David & Leybourne, Stephen & Newbold, Paul, 1997. "Testing the equality of prediction mean squared errors," International Journal of Forecasting, Elsevier, vol. 13(2), pages 281-291, June.
    10. Konstantin A. Kholodilin & Andreas Mense, 2012. "Forecasting the Prices and Rents for Flats in Large German Cities," Discussion Papers of DIW Berlin 1207, DIW Berlin, German Institute for Economic Research.
    11. G. Elliott & C. Granger & A. Timmermann (ed.), 2006. "Handbook of Economic Forecasting," Handbook of Economic Forecasting, Elsevier, edition 1, volume 1, number 1.
    12. Mark W. Watson & James H. Stock, 2004. "Combination forecasts of output growth in a seven-country data set," Journal of Forecasting, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., vol. 23(6), pages 405-430.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Konstantin A. Kholodilin & Boriss Siliverstovs, 2014. "Business Confidence and Forecasting of Housing Prices and Rents in Large German Cities," Discussion Papers of DIW Berlin 1360, DIW Berlin, German Institute for Economic Research.
    2. Xiaojie Xu, 2020. "Corn Cash Price Forecasting," American Journal of Agricultural Economics, John Wiley & Sons, vol. 102(4), pages 1297-1320, August.
    3. Robert Lehmann, 2016. "Economic Growth and Business Cycle Forecasting at the Regional Level," ifo Beiträge zur Wirtschaftsforschung, ifo Institute - Leibniz Institute for Economic Research at the University of Munich, number 65.
    4. Chan, Felix & Pauwels, Laurent L., 2018. "Some theoretical results on forecast combinations," International Journal of Forecasting, Elsevier, vol. 34(1), pages 64-74.
    5. Rossi, Barbara, 2013. "Advances in Forecasting under Instability," Handbook of Economic Forecasting, in: G. Elliott & C. Granger & A. Timmermann (ed.), Handbook of Economic Forecasting, edition 1, volume 2, chapter 0, pages 1203-1324, Elsevier.
    6. Costa, Alexandre Bonnet R. & Ferreira, Pedro Cavalcanti G. & Gaglianone, Wagner P. & Guillén, Osmani Teixeira C. & Issler, João Victor & Lin, Yihao, 2021. "Machine learning and oil price point and density forecasting," Energy Economics, Elsevier, vol. 102(C).
    7. Li, Li & Kang, Yanfei & Li, Feng, 2023. "Bayesian forecast combination using time-varying features," International Journal of Forecasting, Elsevier, vol. 39(3), pages 1287-1302.
    8. Clements, Michael P. & Harvey, David I., 2011. "Combining probability forecasts," International Journal of Forecasting, Elsevier, vol. 27(2), pages 208-223.
    9. Nicoletta Pashourtidou & Christos Papamichael & Charalampos Karagiannakis, 2018. "Forecasting economic activity in sectors of the Cypriot economy," Cyprus Economic Policy Review, University of Cyprus, Economics Research Centre, vol. 12(2), pages 24-66, December.
    10. Faias, José Afonso, 2023. "Predicting the equity risk premium using the smooth cross-sectional tail risk: The importance of correlation," Journal of Financial Markets, Elsevier, vol. 63(C).
    11. Raffaella Giacomini & Barbara Rossi, 2013. "Forecasting in macroeconomics," Chapters, in: Nigar Hashimzade & Michael A. Thornton (ed.), Handbook of Research Methods and Applications in Empirical Macroeconomics, chapter 17, pages 381-408, Edward Elgar Publishing.
    12. Weron, Rafał, 2014. "Electricity price forecasting: A review of the state-of-the-art with a look into the future," International Journal of Forecasting, Elsevier, vol. 30(4), pages 1030-1081.
    13. Cotter, John & Eyiah-Donkor, Emmanuel & Potì, Valerio, 2023. "Commodity futures return predictability and intertemporal asset pricing," Journal of Commodity Markets, Elsevier, vol. 31(C).
    14. Haase, Felix & Neuenkirch, Matthias, 2023. "Predictability of bull and bear markets: A new look at forecasting stock market regimes (and returns) in the US," International Journal of Forecasting, Elsevier, vol. 39(2), pages 587-605.
    15. Lennart Hoogerheide & Richard Kleijn & Francesco Ravazzolo & Herman K. Van Dijk & Marno Verbeek, 2010. "Forecast accuracy and economic gains from Bayesian model averaging using time-varying weights," Journal of Forecasting, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., vol. 29(1-2), pages 251-269.
    16. Jiang, Fuwei & Lee, Joshua & Martin, Xiumin & Zhou, Guofu, 2019. "Manager sentiment and stock returns," Journal of Financial Economics, Elsevier, vol. 132(1), pages 126-149.
    17. Michiel De Pooter & Francesco Ravazzolo & Dick van Dijk, 2010. "Term structure forecasting using macro factors and forecast combination," International Finance Discussion Papers 993, Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System (U.S.).
    18. Li, Jiahan & Chen, Weiye, 2014. "Forecasting macroeconomic time series: LASSO-based approaches and their forecast combinations with dynamic factor models," International Journal of Forecasting, Elsevier, vol. 30(4), pages 996-1015.
    19. Petropoulos, Fotios & Apiletti, Daniele & Assimakopoulos, Vassilios & Babai, Mohamed Zied & Barrow, Devon K. & Ben Taieb, Souhaib & Bergmeir, Christoph & Bessa, Ricardo J. & Bijak, Jakub & Boylan, Joh, 2022. "Forecasting: theory and practice," International Journal of Forecasting, Elsevier, vol. 38(3), pages 705-871.
      • Fotios Petropoulos & Daniele Apiletti & Vassilios Assimakopoulos & Mohamed Zied Babai & Devon K. Barrow & Souhaib Ben Taieb & Christoph Bergmeir & Ricardo J. Bessa & Jakub Bijak & John E. Boylan & Jet, 2020. "Forecasting: theory and practice," Papers 2012.03854, arXiv.org, revised Jan 2022.
    20. Till Weigt & Bernd Wilfling, 2021. "An approach to increasing forecast‐combination accuracy through VAR error modeling," Journal of Forecasting, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., vol. 40(4), pages 686-699, July.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    Housing prices and rents; Forecast combinations; Spatial dependence; Germany;
    All these keywords.

    NEP fields

    This paper has been announced in the following NEP Reports:

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:kof:wpskof:15-372. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: the person in charge (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/koethch.html .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.