Regression Assignment for Statistics for Business

Name: Northampton Housing Price, Neighborhood Characteristics, and Railtrail Proximity Dataset

Type: Natural experiment

Size: 30 variables / 104 observations

Article Title: Rail-Trails and Property Values: Is there an Association?

Descriptive Abstract:

This dataset comprises 104 homes in Northampton: MA that were sold in 2007. We measured the shortest distance from each home to a railtrail on streets and pathways with Google maps and recorded the Zillow.com estimate of each home’s price in 1998 and 2011. Additional attributes such as square footage: number of bedrooms and bathrooms are available from a realty database from 2007. We divide the houses into two groups based on distance to the trail (distgroup).

Sources:

Housing attribute data from the Multiple Listing Service. Housing prices in 1998 are from Zillow.com’s 10-year price estimate while values from 2007: 2011 and 2014 are from Zillow.com's current price estimator. Distance from homes to the Rail-trail were mapped in Google maps "my places" feature by the first author and can be retraced by drawing a line from the home to the nearest railtrail access point. Bikescores and Walkscores from walkscore.com.

Variable Descriptions:

housenum: unique house number

acre: number of acres that the property encompasses

acregroup: less than or equal to 1/4 acre or greater than 1/4 acre

adj1998: estimated 1998 price in thousands of 2014 dollars

adj2007: estimated 2007 price in thousands of 2014 dollars

adj2011: estimated 2011 price in thousands of 2014 dollars

bedgroup: 1-2, 3, 4+ bedrooms

bedrooms: number of bedrooms

bikescore: bike friendliness (0-100 score, higher scores are better)

diff2014: difference in price between 2014 estimate and adjusted 1998 estimate (in thousands of dollars)

distance: distance (in feet) to the nearest entry point to the rail trail network

distgroup: distance is "Closer" (less than or equal to half mile) or "Farther Away" (greater than half a mile

garage_spaces: number of garage spaces (0-4)

garagegroup: any garage spaces (yes/no)

latitude:

longitude:

no_full_baths: number of full baths (includes shower or bathtub)

no_half_baths: number of half paths (no shower or bathtub)

no_rooms: number of rooms

pctchange: percentage change from adjusted 1998 price to 2014 (value of zero means no change)

price1998: Zillow 10 year estimate from 2008 (in thousands of dollars)

price2007: Zillow price estimate from 2007 (in thousands of dollars)

price2011: Zillow price estimate from 2011 (in thousands of dollars)

price2014: Zillow price estimate from 2014 (in thousands of dollars)

sfgroup: squarefeet less than or equal to 1500 or greater than 1500 sf

squarefeet: square footage of interior finished space (in thousands of sf)

streetname: name of street

streetno: house number on street

walkscore: walk friendliness (0-100 score, higher scores are better)

zip: location (1060 = Northampton: 1062 = Florence)

Submitted by:

Nicholas Horton: Professor of Mathematics and Statistics: Amherst College

Ella Hartenian: Department of Biological Sciences: Smith College

Email: [email protected]