Linear Programming in a Multi-Criteria Model for Real Estate Appraisal

In real estate appraisal, research has long been addressed to the experimentation of multi-parametric models able to reduce the margin of error of the estimate and to overcome or to limit, as far as possible, the problems and difficulties that the use of these models often involves. On the one hand, researchers are trying to overcome the essentially deductive approach that has characterized the traditional discipline, and on the other, to minimize the problems arising from a merely inductive approach. The real estate market is characterized by an inelastic supply and by properties whose complexity and differentiation often involve, also and especially on the demand side, subjective and psychological elements that could distort the results of an inductive investigation. This problem can be overcome by increasing the size of the survey sample, and by using statistical analysis. Statistical analyses, however, are often based on very strong assumptions. A multi-criteria valuation model that uses linear programming is applied to the real estate market. The model, integrated with the inductive and deductive approach, exceeds many of the assumptions of the best known statistical approaches.