Trend Analysis of Property Value in the 2020 Pandemic

Never in the history of the world community has there been such a massive cross-national lockdown in an infectious genesis tragedy as in 2020. The entire economy was affected by the pandemic. Restrictions on public life, closures of public places and businesses couldn't help but affect the residential real estate market. But this is the first time the world has encountered an impact of this magnitude and nature in 2020, so it can be said that research in this area is unique and relevant. The purpose of this study is to examine the impact of the pandemic on the changing importance of spatial and apartment factors when buying real estate in 2020, to try to identify changes in real estate market trends during the pandemic and compare them to 2019 trends. The study focuses on the apartment stock of residential real estate sales on the secondary market in St. Petersburg. The work includes a number of theoretical and practical steps. There has been a literature analysis of the real estate market in times of crisis, as well as methods for assessing the impact of spatial and geographical indicators of real estate on their price. The study also included an analysis of interviews with real estate market experts. With the help of machine-learning methods the regression models of gradient boosting of Catboost library on the basis of 15 000 announcements about apartments for sale from the site N1.ru were built. The data was used to build models of price change by spatial and apartment factors for 2019 and 2020, as well as a model of seasonal anomaly 2020 to 2019. An attempt was made to build a model for forecasting prices in 2020 and comparing them with the real figures, as well as an analysis of the factors that influenced this difference. In the analysis of territorial factors, it was found that the factor of importance of central location, increased during the 2020 quarantine period, while factors of proximity to schools, kindergartens and cultural facilities lost their importance in pricing. The analysis of the rapid market response discussed in this study remains relevant to real estate players and developers in order to adjust their strategies to the rapidly changing situation.