Building price-level forecasting: an examination of techniques and applications

Building price indices provide a means of updating cost data for estimating purposes, extrapolation from existing building cost trends, forecasting future price levels, etc. and thus a definite need exists to forecast future building price index levels. In this paper the writers examine a number of forecasting techniques from a hierarchy of forecasting techniques and assess their suitability via the vehicle of the BER building cost index. Special emphasis is placed on the ability of the forecasting methods to model a changing process.