Quantile house price indices in Beijing

Using a comprehensive micro-level dataset of newly-built residential housing units in Beijing, we examine the determinants of house prices from 2013 to 2015, and construct a regular house price index using Ordinary Least Squares estimation and quantile house price indices using quantile regression. Our findings suggest a high appreciation rate of house prices from 2013 to 2015. Moreover, we find that most housing attributes are valued differently across the complete distribution of house prices, and the distribution of house prices changes according to the different value of housing attributes. The result shows that even though the trend of house price indices is similar, the magnitude of appreciation rates vary across different quantiles.