README.md

metadata

title: Zurich Apartment Rent Assistant
emoji: 🏠
colorFrom: blue
colorTo: green
sdk: gradio
sdk_version: 5.9.1
app_file: app.py
pinned: false

Zurich Apartment Rent Assistant

A conversational AI agent that estimates monthly rental prices for apartments in Zurich, Switzerland. Describe an apartment in plain language — the agent extracts the relevant parameters and runs a machine-learning prediction.

How it works

1. You describe an apartment in natural language (rooms, size, location, features)
2. GPT-4o-mini extracts structured parameters and outputs them as JSON
3. A Gradient Boosting regression model (trained on ~800 Zurich listings) predicts the monthly rent
4. GPT-4o-mini translates the prediction back into a friendly, contextualised explanation

Example inputs

• "I'm looking for a 3-room apartment, about 80 m², in Kreis 3."
• "What would a furnished 1.5-room apartment in Zurich city, roughly 40 m², cost?"
• "I want a 4.5-room penthouse with lake view in Kreis 8, about 150 m². It's luxurious."

Parameters the model uses

Parameter	Description
rooms	Number of rooms (half-rooms supported, e.g. 3.5)
area	Living area in m²
tax_income	Municipal median tax income (proxy for neighbourhood wealth)
luxurious / furnished / temporary	Apartment type flags
zurich_city	True = within city of Zurich, False = greater canton
attika / loft / seesicht	Special features
kreis	Zurich city district (Kreis 1–12)

Setup

The app requires an OPENAI_API_KEY environment variable (set as a Hugging Face Space secret).

Model

• Algorithm: Gradient Boosting Regressor (scikit-learn)
• Training data: ~800 Canton Zurich apartment listings
• Key features: Income-Density Score (tax income × population density), log-transformed area, district dummies
• CV R²: ~0.70