House price index and economic outlook in Europe: capture trends and patterns (2021-2023)

Abstract

This research aims to unveil, analyze, and conclude on the dynamics of the House Price Index (HPI) variable in the European Union. We use several variables that are regularly used less by theory in housing research because of their stats' weightiness. Statistical complementarity between less representative variables is rarely considered. The following study covers the three years from 2021 to 2023 to capture trends and patterns over that period, with values every quarter. We put on the GAM (Generalized Additive Models), following a code tutorial based on the stats model’s documentation (James et al., 2021). When we applied the model, the output generated was an equation for each country. We observed a general upward trend in laboring costs for Manufacturing, Industry, and Services through the statistics exploit. We observed that some categories of costs show a greater variation in laboring costs than others, and some exhibit extreme values that can be considered outliers. The Economic Outlook is measured in terms of GDP. It exhibits variations over the quarters, usually showing a drop from the last quarter of the year (Q4) to the first quarter of the following year (Q1). We conclude that the correlation between HPI, costs, and GDP in each country does not always follow the same trajectory pattern, which means a certain variance between the metrics of the two concepts.