A Flexible Neuro‐Fuzzy Approach for Improvement of Seasonal Housing Price Estimation in Uncertain and Non‐Linear Environments

Changes in housing price affect both individuals and government since they have substantial influence on the socio‐economic conditions. Valuations of housing are necessary in order to assess the benefits and liabilities in housing sector. This study presents a flexible meta‐modelling approach for improvement of housing price estimation in ambiguous and complex environments. It is composed of artificial neural network (ANN) and fuzzy linear regression (FLR). Seven FLR models are considered to cover latest approaches and viewpoints. Also, ANN is applied to data sets. The preferred FLR model is selected via mean absolute percentage of error (MAPE) for further considerations, and then the preferred FLR model and the best structure of ANN are applied to the data set. Finally, the preferred model is selected based on MAPE. The intelligent approach of this study is applied for estimation and forecasting housing price in Iran. The housing price in Iran mainly is based on eight economic indices including currency, oil income, general index, house service pricing index, rate of informal market, gross domestic production in basic price, added value of oil group and construction materials price. FLR is identified as the preferred model with lowest MAPE for housing price forecasting in Iran. This shows that the housing market of Iran is associated with severe environmental fuzziness and ambiguity. This is the first study that introduces a flexible neuro‐fuzzy approach for improved estimation and forecasting of housing price in noisy, complex and uncertain environments.