The Department of Spatial Analyses and the Real Estate Market celebrated their 20th anniversary of science-research and academic activity in 2020. The employees of the Department managed by prof. Sabina Źróbek. They represent the scientific discipline of socio-economic geography and spatial development.

The main directions of academic-research activity of the Department include, among others, making use of spatial information systems as well as geostatistical methods for analyzing the real estate market, the development of the theory of the diffusion of information with spatial reference as well as the information efficiency of the real estate market, the development of the methodology of property valuation, methodological and experimental studies regarding legal aspects as well as the economic assessment of the efficiency with which the real estate management and the development of rural areas operates.

The most important scientific projects, both realized in the last five years as well as currently being carried out in the unit are, among others, such research projects as: “Modelling the Dynamics of Real Estate Prices with the Application of the Catastrophe Theory and Scaling Law”, “Developing the Structure of a Subsystem of Supporting Decision-Making on the real Estate Market”, “Analysis and Modelling of Spatial Factors Shaping the Real Estate Market with the Use of GIS Tools”, „Developing Guidelines and a Methodology for Determining the Compensation in Procedures of Land Acquisition for Public Use”, “Application of Hybrid Systems of Artificial Intelligence in Automatic Valuation Models (AVM) for Limited Real Estate Markets with Insufficient Data Sets”.

The carried out research has resulted in numerous publications by the Department workers in scientific publications of a national and international scope.

The Department of Spatial Analyses and the Real Estate Market collaborates with many national and international scientific organizations and professional associations. The Department workers served or continue to serve important functions in the authorities of these organizations.Collaboration on the international scene is also expressed by short-term scientific and academic internships with workers from foreign universities and common publications in renowned journals.

The activity of the Department workers outside the University also includes serving the functions of the editor in chief of the Real Estate Management and Valuation journal, as well as editors of other journals of an international scope, but also participation in the National Qualification Committee dealing with granting professional qualifications to property valuers.

The Department Team has been collaborating with various economic entities for many years, including the Department of Property and Land Surveying in the Olsztyn in the National Centre for Agricultural Support in the territorial unit of Olsztyn and the offices of neighboring communes. Many results of studies obtained in cooperation with these units were of a utilitarian nature and were found to have practical application (e.g. map of land values). The achievements of scientific works on the development of the methodology of the valuation of real estate were used, among others, to prepare Interpretation Notes No. 1 and 2 by the Polish Federation of Valuers’ Associations. The active participation of our staff in works carried out within this Federation resulted in the issuing of National Valuation Standard No. 1 “Valuation for the needs of securing bank debt” by the Ministry of Infrastructure and Construction. These studies are of great importance, not only to the building sector, but also for the entire real estate market.