Hedonic Price Methods and Real Estate Price Index: an Explanatory Study for Apartments Market in Belo Horizonte, Brazil, from 2004 to 2015

Brazil does not have an official real estate price index yet. A 2011 presidential decree stipulated for the Brazilian Institute of Geography and Statistics (IBGE) the assignment to create and spread a real estate price index for Brazil. In this paper, we test some different hedonic model methods to estimate quarterly price indices for apartments in Belo Horizonte, Brazil, from January 2005 to December 2015. Our goals are: i) to measure and compare the different hedonic methods; ii) to present some results that will contribute to the discussion about the development of an official real estate price index in Brazil. The empirical results corroborate the idea of intense apartment prices valuation in Belo Horizonte, mainly between 2007 and 2011, when the annual price index growth remained above 20%. These results cast light on the potential use of both hedonic methods and administrative data base to construct an official real estate price index for Brazil.