Download PDF

Exploring Open City Data to Produce Small Area Estimates for Housing Vacancy Rates for Metropolitan Statistical Areas

Author

Tim Trudell

Co-author

James Ross Foy O'Hagan

Conference

65th ISI World Statistics Congress 2025

Format: IPS Abstract - WSC 2025

Keywords: open-data, small area estimation

Session: IPS 899 - Small Area Estimation for Official United States Household Statistics: Employment, Inflation, and Energy Use

Wednesday 8 October 2 p.m. - 3:40 p.m. (Europe/Amsterdam)

Abstract

We explore the possibility of providing Metropolitan Statistical Area (MSA) level estimates for housing vacancy rates, consistent with higher level aggregate vacancy rates for inside-MSA national estimates. We link Current Population Survey (CPS) microdata with external data, including but not limited to American Community Survey (ACS) area level data and city level open data. We build models across individual MSAs and for a select subset of MSAs, evaluate the potential for open city data to be used in the models. We then evaluate the overall effectiveness of our selected external data to produce reliable small area HVS vacancy estimates.