Rental Rates Research — Criteria & Definitions

Overview

This document defines how the AI rental rate research pipeline evaluates and estimates monthly rental rates across Kuwait. It serves as the single source of truth for the research-rental-rates and batch-research-rental-rates edge functions.

All rates are in KD (Kuwaiti Dinars) per month.

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Unit Types

🏠 Villa / بيت

• Definition: Standalone residential house (دور كامل أو بيت مستقل), typically in private residential (سكن خاص) areas.
• Includes: Traditional Kuwaiti houses, modern villas, government-housing-style homes.
• Rate basis: Entire property (not per floor). If a villa has multiple floors rented separately, the rate reflects the full villa.
• Typical range: 500–2,000 KD depending on area prestige, land size, and number of floors.
• Key factors: Land area (م²), number of floors, street width, age of building, finishing quality.

🏢 Apartment / شقة

• Definition: Residential apartment unit within a multi-unit building.
• Rate basis: Average across all bedroom configurations (studio, 1BR, 2BR, 3BR) in the area. This gives a single representative number per area.
• Typical range: 150–600 KD depending on area and size.
• Key factors: Number of bedrooms, floor level, building age, finishing, parking availability, elevator.

🏪 Shop / محل تجاري

• Definition: Ground-floor commercial retail space (محل تجاري) used for shops, restaurants, or service businesses.
• Rate basis: Average-sized shop (~30–80 م²). Rates vary dramatically by street frontage and foot traffic.
• Typical range: 300–2,000 KD depending on location and frontage.
• Key factors: Street frontage (واجهة), foot traffic, main road vs interior, mezzanine included or not.

🗂️ Office / مكتب

• Definition: Office space in a commercial or mixed-use building, typically above ground floor.
• Rate basis: Average office unit (~40–100 م²).
• Typical range: 200–1,500 KD depending on building quality and location.
• Key factors: Building class (A/B/C), floor level, shared facilities, parking, proximity to commercial hubs.

📦 Warehouse / مخزن

• Definition: Storage or light industrial space (مخزن / مستودع), typically in industrial or peripheral areas.
• Rate basis: Average warehouse (~100–500 م²).
• Typical range: 200–1,000 KD depending on size and access.
• Key factors: Total area, ceiling height, loading dock access, proximity to highways, power supply.

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Research Methodology

Two-Stage Pipeline

1. Stage 1 — Web Search (Perplexity): Searches for real rental listings and market data using bilingual queries (Arabic + English). Uses search_recency_filter: 'year' to prioritize recent data.

2. Stage 2 — Analysis (Gemini): Takes the Perplexity results as context and produces structured rental rate estimates. If no Perplexity data is available, falls back to general market knowledge with low confidence.

Search Query Strategy

For each area, the system searches:

أسعار إيجار [types_arabic] في منطقة [area] الكويت 2025 2026 بالدينار الكويتي
Average monthly rent [types_english] [area] Kuwait KD

Rate Month Tracking

Each rate is tagged with a rate_month (YYYY-MM format) indicating when the data was last researched. This enables freshness tracking — rates older than 3 months should be re-researched.

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Confidence Levels

Level	Arabic	Meaning
high	ثقة عالية	Real market data directly supports the rate. Multiple listings or reliable sources confirm the price range.
medium	ثقة متوسطة	Some real data available but incomplete. Rate is partially supported by listings or market reports.
low	ثقة منخفضة	No direct market data found. Rate is estimated from general knowledge of similar areas and AI inference only.

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Notes

• The apartment rate is always an average across all sizes (studio through 3BR) to provide a single representative figure per area.
• Rates are stored in the rental_rates table with source field indicating ai_research vs manual.
• The batch research function processes 5 areas per batch with 3-second delays and 15-second retry on rate limits.
• Admin can override any AI-suggested rate manually through the UI before applying.
• The notes field stores Arabic source attribution when web data is available.