Phillips, C. P. & Bourassa, S. C. (2025). The State of the State’s Housing 2025: Supply and Affordability in Washington State. Washington Center for Real Estate Research. College of Built Environments, University of Washington.
Person: Steven Bourassa
The State of the State’s Housing 2024: Supply and Affordability in Washington State
Phillips, C. P., Bourassa, S. C., & Virant, M. A. (2024). The State of the State’s Housing 2024: Supply and Affordability in Washington State. Washington Center for Real Estate Research. College of Built Environments, University of Washington.
Reflections on hedonic price modeling
Bourassa, S.C., Hoesli, M., Mayer, M. and Stalder, N. (2025), “Reflections on hedonic price modeling”, Journal of European Real Estate Research, Vol. ahead-of-print No. ahead-of-print. https://doi.org/10.1108/JERER-11-2024-0087
Abstract
Purpose
This paper provides a critical history of residential hedonic price modeling, highlighting key issues and advances. It is based on the keynote address presented by the first author at the European Real Estate Society Annual Conference in Sopot (Gdańsk), Poland, in June 2024.
Design/methodology/approach
The core of the paper is a high-level review of the methodological literature, focusing on three issues: model specification, multicollinearity and functional form. This review is framed by an early example of hedonic price modeling and a current application. These examples demonstrate key issues and advances in hedonic price modeling.
Findings
Hedonic price research has expanded dramatically with the advent of personal computing. Increased availability of data has enabled better model specification. At the same time, the development of interpretable machine learning techniques has allowed much more flexible modeling of functional form. However, multicollinearity continues to be, by definition, an intractable problem.
Originality/value
This paper presents a review of residential hedonic price modeling intended to provide researchers with a useful high-level perspective on the topic. A case study of Gdańsk illustrates an approach to producing interpretable results from machine learning estimations.
Keywords
Hedonic modeling; house prices; specification issues; multicollinearity; functional form; interpretable machine learning; R31
Housing Market Segmentation: A Finite Mixture Approach
Bourassa, S. C., Dröes, M. I., & Hoesli, M. (2024). Housing Market Segmentation: A Finite Mixture Approach. De Economist (Netherlands), 172(4), 291–337. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10645-024-09446-2
Abstract
This paper investigates the usefulness of adding a discrete choice model to the hedonic model via a finite mixture approach. Our approach leads to different hedonic models for different housing market segments based on household information. As such, the proposed method goes beyond measuring the average price of housing attributes. As a case study, we estimate the finite mixture model for the Miami and Louisville metropolitan areas using information on race, ethnicity, and income from the American Housing Survey. We find that the model outperforms the standard hedonic model or a model with linear interaction terms between demographics and housing characteristics. Moreover, market segmentation is based on a complex combination of race, ethnicity, and income. For Louisville, Black households need 2.5 times higher income than White households to advance to a higher market segment and even at high incomes tend to occupy their own segment. For Miami, low-income, non-Hispanic households live in their own segment even if occupying the same dwelling size as households in other segments.
Keywords
Housing market segmentation; Hedonic model; Finite mixture model; R31; O18; D51
WCRER Releases The State of the State’s Housing Report
The Washington Center for Real Estate Research has released a new report entitled “The State of the State’s Housing.” This is an inaugural annual report. View the report here.
Professor Steve Bourassa quoted in The Bellingham Herald on First-time Buyer Housing Affordability
Professor Steve Bourassa of the Washington Center for Real Estate Research (WCRER) and Runstad Department of Real Estate was quoted in a story entitled “First-time Buyer Affordability at Lowest Point in Four Years” in The Bellingham Herald. Read the full article here.
Professor Steve Bourassa featured in The News Tribune discussing housing listings and interest rates
Professor Steve Bourassa of the Washington Center for Real Estate Research (WCRER) and Runstad Department of Real Estate was quoted in a story entitled “Listings are up, interest rates may come down.” Read the full article here.
WCRER releases report and white paper – March 2024
The Washington Center for Real Estate Research (WCRER) has released a white paper entitled “Increasing Washington State’s Residential Development Capacity”, co-authored by WCRER Director Steven Bourassa (also the H. Jon and Judith M. Runstad Endowed Professor and Chair of the Runstad Department of Real Estate) and WCRER Associate Director Mason Virant. WCRER also recently released a report which focuses on the impacts of HB 1923 and HB 2343, legislation enacted in 2019 and 2020 which provide grants to help develop…
UW researchers issue state-level policy recommendations for transit-oriented development
CBE Researchers developed a report “Finding Common Ground: Best Practices for Policies Supporting Transit-Oriented Development,” with the Mobility Innovation Center and led by the Washington Center for Real Estate Research. Project Team: Mason Virant, Associate Director, Washington Center for Real Estate Research Christian Phillips, Urban Design and Planning PhD Program Steven C. Bourassa, PhD Director, Washington Center for Real Estate Research Arthur Acolin, Associate Professor, Runstad Department of Real Estate Visit the project page here.
Steven Bourassa quoted in Washington State Standard article on Rent Prices Stabilizing
Steven Bourassa is an H. Jon and Judith M. Runstad Endowed Professor and Chair in the Runstad Department of Real Estate, and is Director of the Washington Center for Real Estate Research. Professor Bourassa was quoted in a Washington State Standard story entitled “Rents in Washington show signs of stabilizing,” as an expert in the field. Read the article here.