Introduction

Each summer, before the start of the school year, students frantically try to find housing for the year. According to Zillow, the median rent for Washington, DC is $2,676 whereas the median rent for the U.S. is $1,437. This is almost double the national median rent. According to Apartments.com, the average apartment rent in this area is about $1,600 for a studio, $1,900 for one bedroom, $2,500 for two bedrooms, and $2,700 for three. Median home values have tripled from $136,200 in 2000 to $484,000 in 2016 (Clement & Chason).

One out of five DC residents named housing as the biggest problem for DC before crime, education and the Metro system (Clement & Chason). One would expect to get multitude of benefits by paying the high price to live here. Therefore, it is important to understand what we are investing in. Is rent or housing expensive because of the location or are there other factors that contribute to the price? Specifically, we are interested in the relationships between rent and housing prices and the food-related businesses in the area. Are the food businesses better in areas that cost more?

To try to answer some of these questions, we did two types of analysis. One is descriptive, where we try to find relationships between local food businesses and the rent for each zip code in the DC Metro area. The second is predictive, where we try to determine the value of an individual home in Arlington County.

Alex Armbruster: aaa370@georgetown.edu

Linda Li: ll950@georgetown.edu

Yu Yang: yy491@georgetown.edu