# CFRecs: Counterfactual Recommendations on Real Estate User Listing Interaction Graphs

arXiv: https://arxiv.org/abs/2602.05861 · HTML: https://mlsanity.com/paper/2602.05861/

## Key facts

- No citing papers in the map yet (data through 14 Oct 2026).
- Builds on 16 of its 23 references that are in the map.
- First posted on arXiv 5 Feb 2026.

## Builds on (most cited first, 16 of 16)

- [Graph Attention Networks](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1710.10903/) (2017)
- [How Powerful are Graph Neural Networks?](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1810.00826/) (2018)
- [Modeling Relational Data with Graph Convolutional Networks](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1703.06103/) (2017)
- [A Comprehensive Survey on Transfer Learning](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1911.02685/) (2019)
- [GNNExplainer: Generating Explanations for Graph Neural Networks](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1903.03894/) (2019)
- [Just Train Twice: Improving Group Robustness without Training Group Information](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2107.09044/) (2021)
- [Graph Neural Networks in Recommender Systems: A Survey](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2011.02260/) (2020)
- [Flow Network based Generative Models for Non-Iterative Diverse Candidate Generation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2106.04399/) (2021)
- [An Introduction to Deep Reinforcement Learning](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1811.12560/) (2018)
- [A Comprehensive Survey on Trustworthy Graph Neural Networks: Privacy, Robustness, Fairness, and Explainability](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2204.08570/) (2022)
- [How Powerful are K-hop Message Passing Graph Neural Networks](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2205.13328/) (2022)
- [Learning and Evaluating Graph Neural Network Explanations based on Counterfactual and Factual Reasoning](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2202.08816/) (2022)
- [Robust Counterfactual Explanations on Graph Neural Networks](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2107.04086/) (2021)
- [CLEAR: Generative Counterfactual Explanations on Graphs](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2210.08443/) (2022)
- [Reinforced Causal Explainer for Graph Neural Networks](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2204.11028/) (2022)
- [Counterfactual Graphs for Explainable Classification of Brain Networks](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2106.08640/) (2021)

## Abstract (arXiv)

Graph-structured data is ubiquitous and powerful in representing complex relationships in many online platforms. While graph neural networks (GNNs) are widely used to learn from such data, counterfactual graph learning has emerged as a promising approach to improve model interpretability. Counterfactual explanation research focuses on identifying a counterfactual graph that is similar to the original but leads to different predictions. These explanations optimize two objectives simultaneously: the sparsity of changes in the counterfactual graph and the validity of its predictions. Building on these qualitative optimization goals, this paper introduces CFRecs, a novel framework that transforms counterfactual explanations into actionable insights. CFRecs employs a two-stage architecture consisting of a graph neural network (GNN) and a graph variational auto-encoder (Graph-VAE) to strategically propose minimal yet high-impact changes in graph structure and node attributes to drive desirable outcomes in recommender systems. We apply CFRecs to Zillow's graph-structured data to deliver actionable recommendations for both home buyers and sellers with the goal of helping them navigate the competitive housing market and achieve their homeownership goals. Experimental results on Zillow's user-listing interaction data demonstrate the effectiveness of CFRecs, which also provides a fresh perspective on recommendations using counterfactual reasoning in graphs.