Spatial analysis of the effects of socio-economic factors on housing prices in Turkey

The real estate sector is one of the important factors of economic growth in developing and less developed countries. Therefore, an alteration in this sector affects the entire economy. Since the real estate sector has a large share in the Turkish economy, studies on this field are gaining in importance. In this study, unit square meter price of houses, which plays an important role in the determination of housing prices, which is one of the important indicators of the real estate sector, and one of the determinants of the housing demand function, were examined within the framework of spatial econometric analysis. While making this analysis, variables that are socio-economic factors affecting unit square meter price of houses were used. Although the observations of these variables belong to year of 2018, they cover 81 provinces of Turkey. As a result of this study, socio-economic factors such as the number of doctors per thousand people, agricultural product production quantity, sewerage network rate, population density, number of students per teacher, average square meter of residences and total age dependency ratio are important in determining housing prices and these variables have spatial effects. They were determined by applying the spatial autoregressive (lag model). As a result, the feature that distinguishes this study from other studies is that it is a study conducted at the provincial level, covering the whole of Turkey, and also considering on socio-economic factors.