Adjusting for Non-Linear Age Effects in the Repeat Sales Index

A true constant quality real estate price index should measure the general change in price level free from any change in quality over time. In recent years, the repeat-sales method has been widely used to construct constant quality property price indices. Since buildings depreciate over time, a simple repeat-sales index would underestimate the growth in property prices. The major problem of controlling the effects of age constant in a repeat-sales model arises from the exact multicollinearity between the age variable and the time dummy variables. In this study, we derive a solution that is theoretically sound and practical by allowing the age effects to be non-linear. In case of leasehold properties, we further incorporated interest rates into the model because the effects of age on real estate prices depend theoretically on interest rates. A sample of residential units in Hong Kong sold more than once from Quarter 2 of 1991 to Quarter 1 of 2001 (more than 11,000 repeat sales pairs) are used for the empirical analysis.     

Repeat Sales Regression on Heterogeneous Properties

This paper proposes a generalized repeat sales regression (GRSR) that uses repeat sales from the entire market, in which properties may have heterogeneous value appreciation processes, to estimate price indices for not only the entire market, but also submarkets or customized portfolios of properties that only have small numbers of value observations. Monte Carlo simulations provide strong evidence that the GRSR indices more accurately measure the index for the entire market as well as individual property value appreciation than conventional RSR indices. This paper also proposes a Chi-square test to detect the heterogeneity in property value appreciation across submarkets/portfolios, and use simulations to show that the test is powerful in small samples. This paper finally illustrates the application of the GRSR using a historical dataset of the Chicago housing market from 1970 to 1986.     

Office Property Returns in Shanghai,Guangzhou, and Shenzhen

Commercial property development in China has been a growth industry in recent years. This article examines the returns on office property in the three major cities of Shanghai, Guangzhou, and Shenzhen in the period 1991 to 1997. Analyses based on the Security Market Line (SML) show that property investments in the office sector in Shanghai and Guangzhou have excess returns and that Shanghai office property tends to dominate the optimal portfolios due to its superior risk-adjusted returns. While equal returns in Shanghai, Guangzhou, and Shenzhen cannot be rejected, the Shanghai office property is subject to the least systematic risk, compared with all other cities. Hong Kong office property is included only in the less risky optimal portfolios. In addition, our results indicate that there is little correlation between the office property returns in Hong Kong and the office property in Guangzhou and Shenzhen. Guangzhou and Shenzhen office markets, which are geographically relatively close to Hong Kong, tend to be more volatile than the Shanghai office market. However, owing to Shenzhens proximity to Hong Kong, there is significant correlation between the returns of the office property in Shenzhen and the office property in Hong Kong.     

The Hierarchical Repeat Sales Model for Granular Commercial Real Estate and Residential Price Indices

This paper concerns the estimation of granular property price indices in commercial real estate and residential markets. We specify and apply a repeat sales model with multiple stochastic log price trends having a hierarchical additive structure: One common log price trend and cluster specific log price trends in deviation from the common trend. Moreover, we assume that the error terms potentially have a heavy tailed (t) distribution to effectively deal with outliers. We apply the hierarchical repeat sales model on commercial properties in the Philadelphia/Baltimore region and on residential properties in a small part of Amsterdam. The results show that the hierarchical repeat sales model provides reliable indices on a very detailed level based on a small number of observations. The estimated degrees of freedom for the t-distribution is small, largely rejecting the commonly made assumption of normality of the error term.     

金融中心评价指标体系研究

本文在综述国内外关于金融中心评价指标体系的基础上,分析了影响金融中心形成和运行的因素,依据国际金融中心的形成和运行具有较高相关度的原则,构建了包括经济环境、金融市场、金融机构和金融制度四方面内容的评价指标体系,利用2004年东京、新加坡、香港、北京、上海、广州和深圳七个城市的数据,依据层次聚类分析方法对这些城市所处的层次进行定位:北京、广州和深圳成为一类,为金融中心的初级阶段;上海成为第二类,为国内金融中心阶段;香港和新加坡成为一类,是区域国际金融中心;东京处于最高阶段,是真正的国际金融中心.最后对这些城市的发展前景进行了预测.     

Dwelling Age,Redevelopment, and Housing Prices: The Case of Apartment Complexes in Seoul

The aging of a housing structure not only leads to depreciation but also increases the possibility of redevelopment. If redevelopment accompanies an increase in structural density in order to accommodate the increased demand for housing, it provides large capital gains to the existing owners. In this case, expectations of redevelopment in the near future and the eventual announcement of redevelopment plans can have a strong positive impact on the current price of housing. We test this hypothesis using a hedonic pricing model designed to decompose the age effects into depreciation effect and redevelopment effect. Based on 3,474 observations on apartments in Seoul in 2001, estimation results confirm our hypothesis. While the depreciation effect dominates the redevelopment effect until 15 to 19 years of age, depending on the specification, the redevelopment effect eventually dominates the depreciation effect thereafter, causing the apartment price to increase. At 27 years of age, the apartment price decreases by as much as 4553 percent of the initial value, due to depreciation. However, the redevelopment effect increases the price by as much as 2832 percent, driving the price up to 7687 percent of the original value.     

中国艺术品投资收益:离岸与在岸市场的特征和互动

文物艺术品既是一个国家的历史印记和文化瑰宝,也是情感资产和动产。本文基于2000-2017年全球艺术品核心市场——北京、香港、纽约和伦敦核心拍卖行中国书画的微观数据,使用特征价格法构建全球中国艺术品市场价格指数,展示全球中国艺术品拍卖市场发展的全貌,同时创新性地使用重复交易数据探讨离岸和在岸中国艺术品市场投资特征和互动关系。研究表明:北京和香港市场作为中国艺术品最大的在岸和离岸拍卖市场价格相互联动,走势基本一致;艺术品财务收益和精神回报是艺术品投资收藏和消费的主要原因,不同市场间财务收益和风险分散的差异是艺术品市场资产配置和资金流动的动力;纽约和伦敦市场中国艺术品投资收益率低于北京和香港,香港是全球中国艺术品投资收益率最高的地区,重复交易中的北京-香港交易策略占优,离岸香港市场得天独厚的环境优势使香港中国艺术品市场未来发展前景可期。     

Depreciation-Related Capital Gains,Differential Tax Rates,and the Market Value of Real Estate Investment Trusts

We develop a model for valuing U.S. real estate investment trusts (REITs) that considers the tax liability impounded in REITs’ property portfolios. This liability is a function of the portfolio’s accumulated depreciation and is driven by different tax rates applied to individual components of the total gain from property sales. These two components are the capital gain resulting from the sale of property at a price higher than its cost and the gain due to the recapture of depreciation taken during the use of the property. Our measure of value is the REIT’s net asset liquidation value (NALV). The metric of REIT value currently used by analysts is a REIT’s net asset value (NAV), but a REIT’s NAV will always be greater than the NALV and therefore overestimate market value, all else equal. Finally, using observed market prices for REITs, we provide evidence that NALVs give superior estimates of REIT market prices than do NAVs.     

Does Joint Bidding Reduce Competition? Evidence from Hong Kong Land Auctions

This paper analyses firms’ bidding behavior in auctions for development land in Hong Kong. The real estate market in Hong Kong is considered to be oligopolistic as it is dominated by a few top real estate firms, which have strong financial strength/development capacity and large land banks. Joint bidding is used by other real estate firms (“large” firms) to pool resources/capital in order to compete with the top firms. We test whether joint bidding increases or decreases the level of competition in land auctions, using land auction data in Hong Kong from 1991 to 2011. We find that large real estate firms are more likely to be successful than top firms at auctions when bidding jointly. However, joint bidding/winning does not harm competition as reflected by the number of bids, bids per bidder and number of bidders. Land prices also increase significantly in auctions won by joint bidders or alliances of large developers. Our results suggest that joint bidding enhances competition by allowing large firms to act strategically by pooling their resources and act aggressively to compete with the top firms.

     

A hedonic price model for private properties in Hong Kong

A hedonic model is used to explore the effects of locational, structural, and neighborhood attributes on the price structure of private condominiums in Hong Kong. The regression results and the elasticities of housing attributes obtained from the Box-Cox analysis indicate that the valuation of a property is sensitive to changes in housing traits. Home buyers are rational and are willing (unwilling) to pay for desirable (undesirable) housing attributes and that the valuation of a property is market-driven in Hong Kong.     

Developing a House Price Index for The Netherlands: A Practical Application of Weighted Repeat Sales

This paper describes the development of a house price index that has been introduced in May 2005 in The Netherlands. This monthly index, called Woningwaarde Index Kadaster (House Price Index Kadaster), is designed to detect changes in the price of the overall stock of owner-occupied homes. Fifty-five indices are calculated: one overall index, four regional indices, 12 provincial indices and 38 indices based on combinations of region/province and dwelling type. We used Case and Shiller’s geometric Weighted Repeat Sales Model to calculate monthly house price indices. We used recorded data on the sales of over 500,000 owner-occupied homes in The Netherlands, all representing repeat sales between January 1993 and December 2006. The accuracy of the index was determined using the 95% confidence interval. We observed that accuracy might become a problem in smaller sub samples. Revision volatility was explored by comparing the index values computed from all available data until December 2005 with the index values computed from the data available until December 2006. Our analysis showed that revision volatility does not seem to be a major problem to the index. We also explored heteroskedasticity in the Repeat Sales method but did not find conclusive evidence for the proposed heteroskedasticity. Given our target (a geometric mean index value) and the characteristics of the dataset (very large but without property characteristics) the Repeat Sales Method seems to be adequate for calculating a house price index for The Netherlands.

Alternative Methods of Increasing the Precision of Weighted Repeat Sales House Prices Indices

Weighted repeat sales house price indices have become one of the primary indicators used to identify housing market conditions and to estimate the amount of equity homeowners have gained through house price appreciation. The primary reason for the acceptance of this methodology is that it derives a location specific (typically, census division, state or metropolitan area) average change in house prices from repeated observations of individual house prices. It is this repeat attribute that allows repeat sales price indices to claim that it is a preferable index which does a better job of holding quality constant. The amount of time between the two observed prices for a single property is determined by when the home transacts. Some homes transact twice in a period of months and others do not transact for decades. It is likely that individual house price appreciation rates vary from the mean appreciation rate, as estimated by the index, in a systematic fashion. In general, the longer the time between transactions the more variance there is in individual house price appreciation. This paper extends this concept to include new dimensions. For instance, houses that appreciate faster than the mean, as estimated by the index for that location, may experience a different variation structure than homes that appreciate slower. This process can be viewed as an asymmetric treatment of the variance of house price appreciation around the estimated index. In addition, the variance of expensive and affordable homes may also be different and time varying. This paper finds evidence that adding the dimensions of price tiers and asymmetry to the variance estimate has merit and does affect the estimated index as well as homeowner equity estimates. Homeowner equity estimates are especially sensitive to these added dimensions because they depend on both the revised index and the estimated variances, which are specific to each dimension considered—time between transaction, asymmetry, and price tier.     

Pricing Structure in Tokyo Metropolitan Land Markets and its Structural Changes: Pre-bubble,Bubble, and Post-bubble Periods

In this paper, we estimate hedonic price equations of Japanese commercial and residential land prices for a 25-year period and to investigate possible structural changes in these price equations. Our price equations are based on transaction prices, not appraised land values, of commercial land in Central Business Districts of Tokyo (Chiyoda Ward, Chuo Ward, and Minato Ward), and residential land of its suburb (Setagaya Ward). We find that price structure differs substantially among locations, reflecting differences in supplier pricing and end-user preferences. We also find significant structural changes in price structure, identifying pre-bubble, bubble and post-bubble periods.

Transaction Volume and Price Dispersion in the Presale and Spot Real Estate Markets

Noise trading has been intensively studied in finance, but rarely in real estate. Theories of price dispersion have also been well established in retailing research, but less so in real estate. This paper is the first attempt to study the effect of noise trading on price dispersion in the real estate spot and presale (forward) markets. Quality-controlled price dispersion data series are estimated using a sample of transaction data in the housing presale and spot markets in Hong Kong. Our results show that transaction volume has a negative and significant effect on price dispersion in the spot market, but a positive and significant effect in the presale market. These support our conjecture that there are more noise traders in the presale market due to lower transaction costs. The volume effects also provide support for the use of a volume weighted least squares model when constructing a repeat sales index.     

Privatization Through an Overseas Listing: Evidence from China's H-Share Firms

We study the partial privatization of 53 Chinese state-owned enterprises (by their listings on the Hong Kong Exchange over the period July 1993 to December 2002. We find that listing has led to a median increase of 70% in real net profits, 80% in real sales, 50% in capital spending, and a mild but nonsignificant improvement in coverage ratios, but no improvement in return on sales and a significant underperformance of returns against several market index benchmarks. Further investigation shows that firm performance is negatively related to state ownership, but positively related to legal-personal ownership and foreign ownership.     

Three New Real Estate Price Indices for Geneva,Switzerland

This paper develops constant-quality price indices for three categories of real estate-apartment buildings, vacant land, and condominiums—for the city of Geneva, Switzerland. We use both the hedonic and repeat sales models to estimate the price level and, in turn, the rate of price change. The general pattern of each series suggests that real estate prices in Geneva were fairly stable throughout the 1970s, increased sharply during the 1980s, but gave back some of these gains in the early 1990s. Interestingly, the sharp rise in prices in the second half of the 1980s is very similar to that found in some regions of the United States. We also consider the problem, implicit in the repeat sales method, of revisions in previously estimated price indices as additional data become available in later years.     

Liquidity and Information Asymmetry in the Real Estate Market

George Akerlof??s asymmetric information theory explains why lemons are rarely, if at all, transacted. We extend his theory to explain liquidity in the second-hand real estate market. The idea is to decompose real estate into two components: land and the building structure. While sellers may know more about the quality of their structures than buyers, information on land, predominantly its locational attributes, is much more transparent. Without assuming any credit constraints or loss aversion behaviour, our information asymmetry model shows that: 1) the liquidity of real estate increases with the share of its land value; 2) there is a positive relationship between real estate prices and turnover rates when land supply is more inelastic than the supply of structures; 3) the positive relationship is stronger when the land value component gets smaller; and 4) while the availability of first-hand real estate may divert demand away from the second-hand market, such a substitution effect is weaker when the land value component is large. These four implications were confirmed with panel data analysis using Hong Kong??s housing transactions from 1992 to 2008 across 50 districts.     

A Spatial Model of Housing Returns and Neighborhood Substitutability

This article provides a method for estimating housing indices at the local level. It develops a distance-weighted repeat-sales procedure to exploit the factor structure of the error-covariance matrix in the repeat-sales model. A distance function defined in characteristic and geographical space provides weights for the generalized least-squares model, and allows the use of all of the repeated sales in a metropolitan area to measure returns for the specific neighborhood of interest. We use distance-weighted repeat sales to estimate return indices for all zip codes in the San Francisco Bay area over the period 1980--1994.When distance is defined in terms of socioeconomic characteristics, we find that median household income is the salient variable explaining covariance of neighborhood housing returns. Racial composition and educational attainment, while significant, are much less influential. Zip-code level indices often deviate dramatically from the citywide index, depending upon income levels. This has implications for investors and lenders. Our results indicate that rates of return may vary considerably within a metropolitan area. Thus, simply using broad metropolitan area indices as a proxy for capital appreciation within a specific neighborhood may not be justified.     

Intrametropolitan Decentralization: Is Government Structure Capitalized in Residential Property Values?

This paper examines the influence that the intrametropolitan growth in special districts has on residential property values. Our empirical approach tests whether the benefits of decentralizing local public good providers increases, decreases or leaves residential property appreciation rates unchanged. Past research in this area has been limited by the lack of variation in government structure within a region and by the self-selection of areas that decentralize governments. This research overcomes these limitations by 1) comparing appreciation rates for single-family homes that were located in areas that added local governments to appreciation rates for properties that were not; and 2) employing an estimation technique that border matches repeat sales to control for the self-selection of government structure. Overall, empirical results indicate that institutional decentralization has no influence on single-family property appreciation rates. It makes no difference whether the new government is the 3rd, 4th, 5th or 6th new jurisdiction–the new government does not influence appreciation rates. Residential property values for homes located in jurisdictions that added security special districts experienced rates of appreciation that were lower than otherwise comparable properties. Recreation, fire, water, sewer and other special districts had no measurable influence on appreciation rates. Empirical results also indicate that more overlap among local governments reduces appreciation rates. New governments created in areas whose residents have greater income heterogeneity increase appreciation rates. The distance separating the new government from existing governments, the land area of the new government and the creation of multiple new governments have no influence on appreciation rates. Finally, these results depend on the border matching repeat sales estimation technique employed here.     

香港人民币离岸中心发展的机遇与挑战

香港人民币离岸中心建设已成为高层共识,前景光明,并已取得初步成果。它与内地的金融改革是协同推进的,有助于巩固香港金融中心地位,促进东亚经贸繁荣。来自其他国际金融中心的竞争,以及与大陆金融市场在利率、汇率等核心金融指标上的差异,是香港人民币离岸中心发展的重要挑战。展望其发展,有如下建议:采取适当的财政货币手段化解离岸与在岸市场的利率和汇率差异;循序渐进、逐步完善香港人民币离岸市场的货币功能;打通人民币"回流"和"外循环"的通道,支持香港成为全球人民币资产的交易、清算和定价中心。