Valuing New Urbanism: The Case of Kentlands

This study assesses the impact of new urbanism on single-family home prices. Specifically, we use Duany and Plater-Zyberk's traditional neighborhood development (TND) of Kentlands and surrounding conventional subdivisions to estimate the premium, if any, that single-family homeowners are willing to pay to reside in a community with new urbanist features. Using data on 2,061 single-family home transactions and several hedonic price models, the empirical evidence reveals that consumers are willing to pay a premium to locate in Kentlands.     

Search and Liquidity in Single-Family Housing

A two-stage least squares model of housing prices is estimated with data collected from 3358 single-family home transactions. The results provide evidence for an optimal marketing period and indicate that a liquidity premium is priced in single-family home sales. Consistent with the hypothesis derived from economic search models, the model shows higher selling prices for houses having longer expected marketing periods. The model also shows a price premium for houses that sell faster than expectations. This effect supports the concept that liquidity is a value-enhancing characteristic.     

Impact Fees and the Price of New Housing: An Empirical Study

Development exactions in the form of impact fees are being used increasingly by local governments to fund the cost of providing public services necessitated by growth and development. This paper presents the results of an empirical study designed to ascertain the extent to which impact fees are capitalized into the price of new, single-family dwellings. On June 3, 1974, the city of Dunedin, located in Pinellas County, Florida, began assessing impact fees of $1,150 against all new, single-family construction. Using data on 5,839 new home sales in Dunedin and three other cities in Pinellas County from 1971–1982, it was found that builders were able to pass forward the total cost of impact fees to new home buyers. However, the price differential due to impact fees for new dwellings in Dunedin compared to the price of new dwellings in the other three cities disappeared after approximately six years. This is explained by the nature of the fee structure in Dunedin, adjustments in factor costs, increases in the price of housing in competing cities, and unrealized expectations regarding the benefits to be provided by impact fee collections.     

The Impact on Housing Values of Restrictions on Rights of Ownership: The Case of an Occupant's Age

With the exception of anecdotal information, little is known about the specific effects on the value of a house because its ownership is restricted to people older than a certain age. This article provides an empirically-derived assessment of the impact on the selling price of single-family residences when their ownership is age restricted. To determine the effect on the sales price of age-restricted houses, a standard hedonic pricing model is applied to a sample of 371 sales transactions drawn from a suburban area of a large city. The results indicate that an age restriction placed on houses decreases their value by 6%. This finding may be of interest to local land-use regulators, developers who are considering developing age-restricted houses and appraisers who wish to make value adjustments to these homes.     

Forecasting Prices and Excess Returns in the Housing Market

The paper uses quarterly indexes of existing single-family home prices estimated with microdata on properties that sold more than once to estimate excess returns to investment in owner-occupied housing. Housing prices and excess returns are estimated over the period 1970:1 to 1986:3 for Atlanta, Chicago, Dallas, San Francisco. Using time-series cross-section regressions we test for the forecastability of prices and excess returns using a number of independent variables. Price changes in one year tend to continue for more than one year in the same direction. The ratio of construction costs to price, changes in adult population and increases in real per capita income all are positively related to excess returns or price changes over the subsequent year. The results add weight to the argument that the market for single-family homes is inefficient.     

Price Behavior and Capital Gains on Residential Real Estate: The Case of Sweden*

During most of the postwar period the increase of the prices of single-family homes in Sweden have exceeded the general inflation, while for several years the opposite is true of apartment houses. We discuss the reasons and present estimates of capital gains attached to this price behavior. It turns out that apartment houses have often yielded nominal but no real capital gains. Single-family homes have yielded real accrued capital gains amounting to approximately 3% of GNP during the period 1963–1976. We also present a rough indirect method of estimating realized capital gains, first disregarding, and then including the effects of loans.     

Variation Across Price Segments and Locations: A Comprehensive Quantile Regression Analysis of the Sydney Housing Market

Standard house price indices measure average movements of average houses in average locations belonging to an average price segment and hence obscure spatial and cross‐sectional variation of price appreciation rates even within a single metropolitan area. This article combines penalized quantile regression techniques with the hedonic imputation approach to reveal such kind of variation. The method is applied to house transactions from Sydney between 2001 and 2014. The analysis finds significant variation across sub‐markets over time and in particular during the boom‐and‐bust cycle peaking in 2004. Appreciation rates were highest for suburban, low‐priced and lowest for inner‐city, high‐priced houses.     

Estimation of Depreciation for Single-Family Appraisals

Methods for the estimation of depreciation within the cost approach to appraisal of single-family residential property have been the focus of very few empirical studies. The purpose of this study is to generate empirical evidence related to one such method, specifically the age-life method. Within the context of a hedonic price model, functional form of the model and the design of the age variable are chosen so that we can test for alternative paths of depreciation with just one model. The alternative paths can be concave, convex or straight-line. Contrary to the evidence presented in several previous studies, the empirical evidence presented in this paper supports a path of depreciation for single-family houses that is concave (i.e., initially less rapid than straight-line). Of the standard paths of depreciation often suggested, the reverse sum of the years digits path most closely approximates the path indicated as appropriate by this study, particularly in the early years of the life of a house. If appraisers are looking for an approximation of the path of depreciation for single-family residences, it would appear that the reverse sum of the years digits path is much more appropriate than the straight-line path that is often assumed.     

Urban flight: A short-term phenomenon or long-term trend?

We investigate whether the urban flight from more to less dense locations identified by previous housing studies for the early COVID period is a temporary, pandemic-induced phenomenon, or long-term trend. We focus on the period of 2017–2022, 14,961 single-family home transactions from Southwestern Ontario, and three housing market metrics. Our results for sales price in the early pandemic periods are in line with previous studies. However, our results for sales price in the last pandemic phase (2022), marketing time, and visit activity suggest that the urban flight was a temporary phenomenon characteristic of the early COVID phases.     

A Spatiotemporal Solution for the Simultaneous Sale Price and Time‐on‐the‐Market Problem

There exists an important methodological challenge when dealing with sale price and time‐on‐the‐market variables because both variables are simultaneously determined and related to the motivation of the sellers and buyers. Exploiting the fact that transactions occur over space and time, we propose a two‐stage approach based on instrumental variables (IV) built from information collected from previous transactions. The unidirectional temporal property and the fact that other transactions are exogenous from the perspective of a single buyer or seller are exploited to evaluate the effect of the sale price on time‐on‐the‐market, and the effect of time‐on‐the‐market on the sale price. Based on 29,471 transactions occurring in the suburban neighborhood of Montréal (1992‐2000), the results suggest that, everything else being equal, houses staying longer on the market provide negative information to the market, which results in a lower final sale price, while the final sale price is negatively related to time‐on‐the‐market, indicating that houses of better quality (better amenities) stay less time on the market.     

The Effect of Regional Growth Characteristics on Regional Housing Prices

As contrasted with strictly national housing reports, this article highlights the regional variations in population growth patterns and recently built owner-occupied housing as a means of determining single-family housing price components (i.e., developed lot values, homebuilding costs, and builder's profit and overhead) by region. The assertion that escalating lot costs and increases in new housing costs will limit the demand for single-family housing is challenged on a national basis and treated individually for the West, Northeast, South, and North Central Regions of the country.     

Annual Review Article 1993: British Public Sector Industrial Relations

Abstract : Developments in public-sector industrial relations during 1993 have raised questions about unions, pay determination and conflict resolution. This review explores some of the tensions in these areas created by new restrictions on pay increases, changes in reward structures and further market-testing across services. Where the different forms of pay determination buy industrial peace, the price may be too high in terms of the productivity and efficiency requirements gains now being demanded. But co-operation is needed too, and the dilution of the Whitley system of collective bargaining may be more likely to produce the very co-operation embodied in its philosophy, but not always present in its practice. The new 'superunion' UNISON will play a role here, as single-table bargaining and even single-union deals develop. These institutional developments will also be affected by pay flexibility measures which endeavour to improve individual performance at the front line of services, while in practice increasingly giving the rewards to management.     

Big House, Little House: Relative Size and Value

How do markets value relative house size in a neighborhood? The literature offers differing rationales: atypical houses sell for less, capitalization of property taxes penalizes larger and benefits smaller houses in mixed neighborhoods and conspicuous consumption reinforces the value of relatively larger houses and reduces the value of relatively smaller houses to consumers. Using a simultaneous price‐liquidity model that controls for neighborhood supply and demand conditions, this article finds a dominant tax capitalization effect on price and marketing time that appears to override any extant atypicality or conspicuous consumption effects.     

An Investigation of the Major Influences of Residential Liquidity: A Multivariate Approach

The liquidity of the single-family home has been potentially compromised by prevailing conventional mortgage market conditions in the 1980s. The primary objectives of this study are to investigate the degree of liquidity of a given residence, defined to incorporate both the "recovery-of-value" and "timeliness" dimensions, and the major influences upon such liquidity. The multivariate techniques of canonical correlation and multiple discriminant analysis are employed to identify those property characteristics and/or prevailing mortgage market conditions that most appreciably influence the liquidity of a residential listing.     

Can Tightness in the Housing Market Help Predict Subsequent Home Price Appreciation? Evidence from the United States and the Netherlands

This article assesses the predictive power of variables that measure market tightness, such as seller's bargaining power and sale probabilities, on future home prices. Theoretical insights from a stylized search‐and‐matching model illustrate that such indicators can be associated with subsequent home price appreciation. The empirical analysis employs listings data on residential units offered for sale through a real estate broker in the Netherlands and for certain U.S. regions. Individual records are used to construct quarterly home price indices, an index that measures seller's bargaining power and (quality‐adjusted) home sale probabilities. Using conventional time‐series models we show that current sale probabilities and bargaining power can significantly reduce home price appreciation forecast errors and help to predict turning points in local area housing markets. The measures and approaches in this article help to demonstrate ways in which researchers and practitioners can leverage listings data to gain knowledge about the current and future state of the housing market.     

The Impact of Growth Control Regulations on Housing Prices in California*

This paper examines the impact of growth controls on the price of new single-family homes. Four types of growth controls are discussed and each is found to have a significantly different impact on housing prices. Regulations that are imposed by one locality only are first compared to those that are imposed by a locality whose neighbors also control growth. In California, increases in house prices in communities with only local growth controls cannot be distinguished from communities that do not control growth. However, the 1969 to 1976 housing price increase in growth control jurisdictions located in extensively regulated housing markets is significantly higher than in local-only or no-control jurisdictions. In addition, controls that restrict the rate of development are compared to those that specify the quality of development. In the extensively regulated San Francisco Bay area, the 1969 to 1976 housing price increase was 35% higher in rate-controlled communities and 20% higher in quality-controlled communities than in no-control communities.     

Longer term housing market effects of a major US airport closure

Using a unique dataset, we examine various effects of closing Denver's Stapleton Airport, and subsequent redevelopment, on nearby housing markets. We find immediate anticipatory price effects upon announcement, but no price changes at closing and little evidence of upward trending prices between announcement and closing. Post-closure, more higher income and fewer Black households moved in, and developers built larger houses on larger lots. Increases in the price of pre-existing housing are also found. Finally, we find that post-closing price increases were largest in areas that were closest to the center of new commercial development and that had greater exposure to new housing construction.     

The Nearest Neighbors Appraisal Technique: An Alternative to the Adjustment Grid Methods

This study presents a new appraisal technique, dubbed the Nearest Neighbors Appraisal Technique, which vastly reduces the subjectivity of the traditional adjustment grid methods while eliminating the need to adjust for subject-comparable differences on a piecemeal basis. Any number of appraisers who apply this technique to the same property at the same point in time will get the exact same estimate of value. The technique avoids piecemeal adjustments by capturing all subject-comparable differences in a single measure. Using single-family sales data, the technique is found to be more accurate than any of the adjustment grid methods and hedonic price regression estimation procedures.     

Electronic funds transfer: The creeping revolution

The much heralded ‘banking revolution’ has hitherto made steady rather than spectacular progress. This article focuses on the vanguard of the revolution, electronic funds transfer (EFT) and the growth and potential of automated clearing houses, automation in the branch and at point of sale, banking in the home, and for the corporate customer worldwide. While EFT developments will continue, the use of cash and the paper flow generated by cheques will still play an important role in banking systems.     

The Impact of Initial-Year Discounts on ARM Prepayments

This study uses new data on the rate of prepayment on conventional single-family adjustable-rate mortgages (ARMs) that originated between 1983 and 1986 to determine if ARMs with and without initial-year discounts have the same probability of paying off. The new data are from a large national private mortgage insurer in the United States. Each loan is tracked from its origination date through prepayment or the end of 1991. Nonparametric test statistics are used to test for differences in these prepayment rates. The findings suggest that ARMs with initial-year discounts are paid off at a rate that is essentially no different from the rate on otherwise comparable ARMs without initial-year discounts.