Segmentation of Transaction Prices Submarkets in Vienna, Austria Using Multidimensional Spatiotemporal Change–DBSCAN (MDSTC-DBSCAN)

This study delineates transaction price submarkets of dwellings in Vienna by performing spatiotemporal clustering and analysing the change in purchasing prices in these clusters between 2018 and 2022. The submarkets are created using a novel spatiotemporal clustering method referred to as Multidimensional Spatiotemporal Change–DBSCAN (MDSTC-DBSCAN), which incorporates the temporal change in transaction prices along with spatial proximity to identify spatial areas with similar transaction prices. It represents an advancement over MDST-DBSCAN for this use case, as it considers the change over time as valuable information rather than a constraint that further splits the clustering groups. The results of the case study in Vienna indicate variations in price growth rates among the submarkets (i.e., contiguous regions with similar prices and price growth rates) that confirm the importance of considering the temporal changes in transaction prices. With respect to the Viennese case study, a lower Moran’s I value was observed for 2022 compared to previous years (2018 to 2021), indicating a higher level of homogeneity in transaction prices. This finding was also supported by the cluster analysis, as less expensive clusters demonstrated higher rates of price increase compared to more expensive clusters. Future research can enhance the algorithm’s usability and broaden its potential use cases to other multidimensional spatiotemporal event data.