Thermal comfort and market niches for apartment buildings: impact of the current thermal regulation in the private real estate market in Santiago de Chile

Almost a decade has passed since Chile begins to implement a Thermal Regulation for dwellings, which established a minimum requirement for each building component, according to different climatic zones. This article proposes a series of dynamic simulations, in order to assess the thermal comfort (during winter and summer) of apartments in Santiago de Chile for lower and upper middle class. Some building typologies were defined by means of the twostage clustering methodology. These were built using the properties for sale database of Portalinmobiliario.com (2003-2009). The results of thermal simulations show that the Thermal Regulation has a positive impact in the thermal behaviour of these typologies during the heating season. However, at the same time, there is an important risk of overheating in summer.