Purpose

The paper addresses the puzzling phenomenon of the ubiquity of economic forecasting, of which property market forecasting is but one instance, on the one hand, and the unreliability of such forecasts, on the other hand. The paper explains why property market forecasts fail, in a non-trivial sense, and why this problem is irredeemable.

Design/methodology/approach

This was a conceptual paper and was based on original thought and literature review.

Findings

This paper attributes the failure of property market forecasts to the inappropriate application of the methodology of the natural sciences to the social sciences by mainstream economics. Specifically, the problem is located in the positivist philosophy and the assumptions of methodological individualism and rational choice theory underlying neoclassical economic theory.

Originality/value

The paper makes an original contribution by clearly showing why and how the methodology of the natural sciences, especially physics, has been applied to economics and property market analysis, why this is inappropriate and why it leads to failure. The paper introduces a debate that has hitherto been mostly confined to philosophy and mainstream economics into the property or real estate discipline and in a manner that is accessible to a non-philosophy audience.

中文翻译：

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为什么房地产市场预测失败

目的

本文探讨了普遍存在的令人困惑的经济预测现象，一方面是房地产市场预测，另一方面是这种预测的不可靠性。这篇论文解释了为什么房地产市场预测会以一种不平凡的方式失败，以及为什么这个问题是不可挽回的。

设计/方法/方法

这是一篇概念性论文，基于原始思想和文献综述。

发现

本文将房地产市场预测的失败归因于主流经济学将自然科学的方法论不适用于社会科学。具体而言，问题在于实证主义哲学以及新古典经济学理论基础上的方法论个人主义和理性选择理论的假设。

创意/价值

本文通过清楚地说明自然科学尤其是物理学的方法为何以及如何应用于经济学和房地产市场分析，为什么这样做不合适以及为什么会导致失败，所以做出了原创性贡献。本文介绍了一种辩论，迄今为止，辩论主要限于哲学和主流经济学进入房地产或房地产学科，并且以一种非哲学的读者可以访问的方式进行。