Barcelona housing agency for students

A year ago I went to Barcelona to study at the University of Technology of the city. Because I was in
South America until late August, and would arrive in Barcelona in the week classes would start, I
would have little time to look for an apartment. I tried my luck on the internet and found different
agencies offering lodging and apartments for students.1

After some discussion with my parents, they told me they would pay my apartment, up until an
amount of €350 per month. Besides they would give me an allowance of €50, that included possible
other expenses, such as public transport.

This puts the first criteria for the selection process:

P ≤ 350 (including ‘gastos comunes’)

Because there was still quite a number of offers in this price range, I went talking with a friend of
mine who studied in Barcelona the last semester. I wondered if he could give me some advice about
where to live in Barcelona (B). He told me that by far the best place to live was in (the
neighborhood of) ‘el Born’. Raval and ‘Gotico’ were also in the centre, and acceptable, but a slightly
‘dirty’ area. Another nice ‘barrio’, but a bit further from the centre, was Gracia. The university would
best to be reached living in the Raval or Gotico neighborhood.

Because of the pretty big amount of possibilities, it was possible to let these criteria count. I would
choose from the offered apartments in the selected areas, or somewhere close to it.

L = {Born v Raval v Gotico v Gracia}

There were still some other factors that would play a role in the process of choosing an apartment.
First was the preference of having at least 2 roommates (R), and the more the better, until the
number of 5. Secondly the size of the room (S) would count in the decision. Finally the extras it had
to offer, such as balcony, private bathroom, cable television, etc.

Two conditions had to be met regarding these extra factors:

R≥2
S ≥ 12 m²

With al these criteria I was able to make a selection on what seemed best to me. Some five
alternatives were finally selected. These alternatives were to be judged based on the following
factors:

- Location (L)
- Number of roommates (R)
- Size room (S)
- Extras (E)

All of these factors have to be explained in further detail. The factor price was not taken into
account, because I was given a maximum, and below that maximum my parents would pay for it.
We go on with the explanation of the factors that will count in the decision making process.

Location (L): The location, as mentioned earlier, has to be in the three mentioned neighborhoods.
Still, I preferred living in ‘el Born’ above Gotico, Gotico above Raval, and living in Raval above living
in Gracia. Even within a certain neighborhood, there are some aspects that influence the valuation
of the location, such as the nearness of a park or metro station. That’s why I made a distinction
between location, and accompanying external aspects. I used the following for this; every location
has its own valuation based on its neighborhood, which can be increased in case of positive
external aspects (negative aspects are never mentioned), with a maximum of 1 point increase. I
assigned the following values for each neighborhood:

Gracia: 1,0
Raval: 2,0
Gotico: 2,5
Born: 3,0

1
www.loquo.com, www.habitatgejove.com
Number of roommates (R): An important aspect for me is to live with people, so as a criterion I
set the minimum of 2 persons, but I rather have more people living with me. The value does not
increase linear with every extra roommate. I value an increase of one roommate higher when this is
the first extra roommate above the two I already have. To be more specific, I value the first
roommate as much as the two following. The second extra roommate I value a bit more than the
third. In numbers you can see it as a value of 0,5 for the first extra roommate, 0,3 for the second,
and 0,2 for the third. Four or more extra roommates do not add extra value for me. This is
explained in the graph below.

# Roommates Value

1
0,9
0,8
0,7
0,6
0,5
0,4
0,3
0,2
0,1
0
2,0 3,0 4,0 5,0

Figure 1 - Value function # of roommates

Size room (S): Another important aspect, the size of the room, has the same characteristic. I want
a room that counts at least 12 m2. I value the first extra 2 square meters as much as the following 4
(each 0,5). In the graph below the value function can be seen.

Size Value

1
0,9
0,8
0,7
0,6
0,5
0,4
0,3
0,2
0,1
0
12,0 13,0 14,0 15,0 16,0 17,0 18,0

Figure 2 - Value function Size

Extras (E): The factor extras is difficult to define, because it can exist of many things, such as large
kitchen, washing machine, balcony, windows in room, cable television, Internet, etc. It merely
represents the impression of the apartment besides the already mentioned factors as number of
roommates and location. The value range of this factor is from 0 to 5, the highest meaning the
most luxurious apartment one could think of, with all extras imaginable, and even more. The note 0
is given to an apartment that does not have anything extras, just provides the basic living, washing
and kitchen facilities.

In this way all (for me) important aspects in the process of looking for a room in Barcelona are
covered, without overlap or correlation between the criteria, hence they are preferentially
independent.

Multi-objective Value Analysis

To make the best choice, I used a Multi Objective Analysis approach. The following value function
can be used to describe the decision-making process.

v(L,R,S,E) = wLvL(L)+ wRvR(R) + wSvS(S) + wEvE(E)

With this function the one can value different alternatives, depending on the level of importance or
weight (w) of each criterion, and the value (v) given to the criterion. The selected alternatives have
the following scores on the different criteria, as described in the table below. Note that these are
the scores, that the possible external effects and extra number of roommates are already processed
in it.

Alternati Location # of roommates Size Extras

ve
1 1,5 3 18 1,5
2 3,5 5 13,5 2
3 2,5 4 15 3
4 2,5 2 12 4
Table 1 - Alternatives

By using swing weights I determined the importance for each of the criteria, which have to sum up
to 1. The smallest value increment is for the size criterion, then extra roommates, followed up by
extras, and finally location.
wL = 0,50
wR = 0,15
wS = 0,10
wE = 0,25

This means that I find the location of my future apartment twice as important than the extras it
offers, and even more important than the size and number of roommates. One should not forget
that I already have made a selection, in which quite some desires have been satisfied. The weights
are thus assigned to the different extra features of the apartment regarding location, size, number
of roommates, and extras offered.

Problem Solution
We have now come to the part where we are going to solve the problem. We use for this the
spreadsheet program Microsoft Excel. First the different value functions for each of the criteria will
be described, then the scores, and based on the weighted single dimensional values, a
recommendation will follow. After this recommendation a robustness analysis will conclude this
document.

Value functions
Within the following tables;
- Mono answers the question whether preferences are monotonically increasing (higher
amounts of X are better), or decreasing (lower values are preferred).
- ρ is the exponential constant, that can be calculated through determining the normalized
mid-value and subsequently finding its normalized exponential constant R. Then the
multiplication of R and the range of the particular criterion gives ρ.
o Only for the criterion R and S the value of ρ is finite, because for the other criteria
the value function is linear. This means that for these criteria, I value every increase
or decrease the same.
o For criterion S ρ is calculated as follows, with X the standardized mid-value. (X-
Low)/(High-Low) 0,33; look up R in z0,5 table 0,677. ρ = 0,677 * (High-Low) =
4,062
- Are all criteria explained with an exponential single dimensional value function.
- Show the range of the values (Low-High).
- Base considers the particular weights belonging to each of the criteria.

Location # of roommates Size Extras

X Value X Value X Value X Value
Low: 1 2 0 Low: 12 Low: 1,5
High: 4 3 0,5 High: 18 High: 4
Mono: increasing 4 0,8 Mono: increasing Mono: increasing
Rho: infinite 5 1 Rho: 4,062 Rho: infinite
Base: 0,5 Base: 0,15 Base: 0,1 Base: 0,25
Table 2 - Value functions
Now the Weighted Single Dimensional Values are being calculates, which will conclude in the
decision on which of the alternatives is the best choice. The values for size are calculated in the
following manner:

VS(x) = (1 – e[-(High – x)/ρ])/(1 – e[-(High – Low)/ρ])

Multiplied with the weight (0,1) gives the weighted single dimensional values. In the diagram below
all values are filled in, which gives a clear overview of the results.

Alternati
ve Weighted Single Dimensional Values Scores
L R S E
1 0,08 0,08 0,10 0,08 0,33
2 0,42 0,15 0,01 0,10 0,68
3 0,25 0,12 0,03 0,15 0,55
4 0,25 0,00 0,00 0,20 0,45
Table 3 - Weighted Single Dimensional Value functions

Recommendation
Clearly alternative number two is the one to prefer. Especially the highly favorable location gives
this alternative the most value. In the graph below the different alternatives are compared with
regards to the different scores per criterion. Besides location, the number of roommates is a very
important criterion in favor of alternative 2.

L R S E

0,00 0,10 0,20 0,30 0,40 0,50 0,60 0,70 0,80

Figure 3 - Overview scores per criterion

Robustness Analysis
The result of the analysis is based on personal desires regarding my future living situation. These
preferences of course are not generic, they do not count for every person. Especially the high
importance on location could be different for people. Therefore a sensitivity analysis is being done,
to determine the impact on alternatives with different models. In the following graph the influence
of changing the weight given on Location can be seen.
 1,00
0,90
2
0,80 2
0,70 2
2 1
0,60 3 2
3 3 3 2
0,50 2
1 3 3
4
4 4 3
1
4 4
0,40 4
1 4
0,30 1
1
0,20
1
0,10
0,00
0 0,2 0,4 0,6 0,8 1

Figure 4 - Sensitivity Analysis

After this analysis a conclusion can be drawn regarding the sensitivity of the preferred option;
alternative 2. Only when the importance of the location, expressed in its weight, is below 0,2,
another alternative seems more attractive, number 3. Another conclusion is that, if the other
weights don’t change significantly, alternatives 1 and 4 are not preferred. This is not the only
possible way of doing a sensitivity analysis, there are many possibilities.

Conclusions
According to this analysis I choose apartment number 2, because of its excellent location, and its
overall score. Other people might have other preferences, regarding the weights assigned to
criteria, as well as the value range (and value assignment!). Therefore this analysis can be
considered very personal, and maybe not useful for people with other ideas, other desires, etc. On
the other hand, there is a possibility to personalize this analysis, using the same method, but
choosing your own criteria, and assigning weights to these criteria. Because the analysis is done in
Excel, and the scores, values and weights are all connected, one could do other analyses by just
changing the parameters. This in itself could be a great service for housing agencies, letting people
fill in their most important issues, preferences, and criteria, through a short questionnaire, and
calculating the best five options for them.

One can say that the more criteria you put in an analysis, the better the outcome will be, because
you don’t leave any wish, thought, preference or other possible issue out of it. But it can be very
difficult to give the right weights to each and every criterion, and expect that it really represents
the person or persons doing the analysis. I would therefore recommend, when doing an analysis as
such, not taking into account more than the four most important criteria.

Thieme Hennis
05 April, 2006
Stud: 1052381