Spatial prediction of apartment rent using regression-based and machine learning-based approaches with a large dataset

Employing a large dataset (at most, the order of n = 10^6), this study attempts enhance the literature on the comparison between regression and machine learning (ML)-based rent price prediction models by adding new empirical evidence and considering the spatial dependence of the observations. The regression-based approach incorporates the nearest neighbor Gaussian processes (NNGP) model, enabling the application of kriging to large datasets. In contrast, the ML-based approach utilizes typical models: extreme gradient boosting (XGBoost), random forest (RF), and deep neural network (DNN). The out-of-sample prediction accuracy of these models was compared using Japanese apartment rent data, with a varying order of sample sizes (i.e., n = 10^4, 10^5, 10^6). The results showed that, as the sample size increased, XGBoost and RF outperformed NNGP with higher out-of-sample prediction accuracy. XGBoost achieved the highest prediction accuracy for all sample sizes and error measures in both logarithmic and real scales and for all price bands (when n = 10^5 and 10^6). A comparison of several methods to account for the spatial dependence in RF showed that simply adding spatial coordinates to the explanatory variables may be sufficient.