Estimate the Housing Price Under the Impact Of COVID-19 and Possible Migration Due to the Demand for Density

Abstract

Different population among the states shows a heterogeneous housing price trend during the past years. Any possible abnormal migration will cause price change. Thus, the migration could be tackled by comparing the current price trend with the data in past 10 years. COVID-19 is a strong effect which could cause migration. In order to observe the possible migration under this situation, wo high-population states were chosen as examples – California and New York, to compare with two low-population states – Nevada and Ohio. Three machine learning techniques have been used (Random Forest, XGboost, and Ridge and Lasso regression) to forecast housing price in U.S.: the difference between the real price and forecast price trend will show the amount of real estate transactions affect by the pandemic. The observed data was compared with the predicted results after COVID-19. The final result didn’t show a strong evidence that would verify a possible migration, but the answer will be clearer with further studies.