Moving towards a Smarter Housing Market: The Example of Poland

Mateusz Tomal

doi:10.3390/su12020683

Abstract

Cities are currently undergoing vast changes, which have very significant implications for the functioning of the housing market. In particular, it should be stated that the traditional residential market, in imitation of the smart city concept, is becoming increasingly smarter. This smartness can be expressed in four dimensions: the “automatic” rental housing market; innovative digital platforms in the traditional housing market; innovative policies and housing models; and the ability to forecast demand on the housing market, which together form the so-called smart housing concept. On this basis, this study attempted to assess empirically the smartness of the residential markets in Polish provincial capitals. Firstly, after a thorough analysis of digital housing portals, official websites of Polish provincial capitals and public statistics data, the smart housing concept was operationalised in all its dimensions by defining appropriate indicators measuring its level in a given city. Then, using the zero unitarization and entropy weight methods, followed by a no-pattern synthetic measure, a comprehensive smart housing index was obtained for each city investigated. Research results showed that there is a large degree of variation in the level of smartness of the housing markets in the examined cities. Furthermore, the analysis also indicates that the economic dimension of the smart city concept and the co-working concept are the main driving forces behind the development of smart residential markets. In addition, the study reveals that the implementation of the smart housing concept has a positive impact on the quality of life of city inhabitants.

Highlights

Urban areas are an extremely important subject of scientific research [1] and a forum for implementing new policies
Changes in the residential markets have already been noticed by Maalsen [6], who was the first to introduce the concept of smart housing
In the first stage of the empirical research, the level of smartness of housing markets in the studied cities was measured. This analysis was carried out in two stages: in the first stage, each dimension of the smart housing concept was evaluated separately; in the second stage, the comprehensive smart housing index was estimated on the basis of all dimensions of the investigated concept

Summary

Introduction

Urban areas are an extremely important subject of scientific research [1] and a forum for implementing new policies. Cities are currently undergoing changes to meet as many of the demands of a constantly growing number of inhabitants as possible [4] One such requirement is the need for housing, which is provided by the real estate market operating in a given city. It can even be said that the smart city concept has changed the paradigm of urban space development [8], and the desire to increase the smartness of cities has become a key task for scientists, politicians and even local communities [9] On this basis, it is highly likely that the housing market will undergo a significant redefinition towards becoming smarter. From a theoretical point of view, this article is intended to:

Objectives

Results

Conclusion