Exploring the Trend of New Zealand Housing Prices to Support Sustainable Development

The New Zealand housing sector is experiencing rapid growth that boosts the national economy but also results in the loss of valuable resources. In line with the growth, the housing market for both residential and business purposes has been booming, as have house prices. To sustain the housing development, it is critical to accurately monitor and predict housing prices so as to support the decision-making process in housing sector. This study is devoted to applying a mathematical method to predict housing prices. The forecasting performance of two types of models: ARIMA and multiple linear regression analysis are compared. The ARIMA and regression models are developed based on a training-validation sample method. The results show that the ARIMA model generally performs better than the regression model. However, the regression model explores, to some extent, the significant correlations between house prices in New Zealand and the macro-economic conditions.