Effects of neighborhood streetscape on the single-family housing price: Focusing on nonlinear and interaction effects using interpretable machine learning

Abstract

Previous studies using the conventional Hedonic Price Model to predict existing housing prices may have limitations in addressing the relationship between house prices and streetscapes as visually perceived at the human eye level, due to the constraints of streetscape estimations. Therefore, in this study, we analyzed the relationship between streetscapes visually perceived at eye level and single-family home prices in Seoul, Korea, using computer vision technology and machine learning algorithms. We used transaction data for 13,776 single-family housing sales between 2017 and 2019. To measure visually perceived streetscapes, this study used the Deeplab V3 + deep-learning model with 233,106 Google Street View panoramic images. Then, the best machine-learning model was selected by comparing the explanatory powers of the hedonic price model and all alternative machine-learning models. According to the results, the Gradient Boost model, a representative ensemble machine learning model, performed better than XGBoost, Random Forest, and Linear Regression models in predicting single-family house prices. In addition, this study used an interpretable machine learning model of the SHAP method to identify key features that affect single-family home price prediction. This solves the “black box” problem of machine learning models. Finally, by analyzing the nonlinear relationship and interaction effects between perceived streetscape characteristics and house prices, we easily and quickly identified the relationship between variables the hedonic price model partially considers. © 2025 Han et al. This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited.