Variable elasticity of substitution in urban housing production

The notion that the elasticity of substitution in urban housing production should vary with changing intensities of land use seems to be realistic and theoretically viable. Hence the variable elasticity of substitution production function has been proposed by some authors. However, it suffers from a serious shortcoming that the elasticity of substitution should not exceed unity. To allow for flexibility in the range of the elasticity of substitution, we explore a general functional form for the housing production function, the weak disposability of inputs production function in particular. Our empirical findings, based on the Santa Clara County single-family housing data, provide evidence that this general function is a more accurate specification of urban housing production than the variable elasticity of substitution function.     

Segmentation in urban housing markets

This study tests the hypothesis that urban housing markets are segmented in the sense of significantly different prices per unit of housing services existing contemporaneously in spatially or structurally defined submarkets. Using an unusually rich data set for single-family, suburban Boston homes, significant differences in the prices of individual housing attributes are found; but these differences result in negligible differences in the overall price per unit of services. A main conclusion is that the market is working fairly efficiently to eliminate price premiums and discounts, at least in the portion of the market analyzed.     

Housing submarkets and the impacts of foreclosures on property prices

The dramatic rise in the number of foreclosed properties since 2006 has come to assume the proportions of a national crisis. It is widely acknowledged that foreclosures hurt neighborhoods by devaluing the nearby properties through various channels. This paper offers a new way of conceptualizing and then estimating the potential effects of foreclosures on property values. Housing stock heterogeneity in the central city old neighborhood allows for the possibility that the impacts of nearby foreclosures may differ across types of housing. This study uses a dataset that covers twenty years of housing values from the City of Worcester (MA), and finds evidence that foreclosures of multi-family houses in close proximity influence the sales price of surrounding single-family properties after controlling for impact from foreclosure of nearby single-family houses. The most preferred estimate suggests that each multi-family foreclosure that occurs between 660 and 1320 feet away from the sale lowers the predicted sales price by approximately 3%. Nearby multi-family spillover impacts also persist over time. In addition, a new approach advocating for an alternative definition of housing submarket suggests that a distant foreclosure within the same submarket also lower sales price of a single-family home by 0.1%.     

城市空间结构理论——单中心城市静态模型

首先介绍了在西方城市经济理论中被广泛接受的单中心城市空间结构静态模型。然后,利用比较静态分析方法(comparativestaticanalysis),分析区位、居民收入及交通费用(区位,居民收入及交通费用为模型的外生变量(exogenousvariable))对价格和房屋消费量(价格和房屋消费量为模型的内生变量(endogenousvariable))的影响。最后,理论模型通过引进一般住房生产函数,推导出土地价格及资本密度(即建筑高度)的空间变化规律。通过对城市经济模型进一步分析(对极值条件或解的微分解析分析)得出地价(地租),资本密度(或称容积率),人口密度的空间分布规律,这些规律对城市规划,城市政策,引进市场原则和价格机制来提高城市土地利用效率都有理论指导意义。     

A City Divided by Political Philosophies: Residential Development in a Bi-Provincial City in Canada

This paper examines the impact of two distinct political ideologies on the development of residential dwellings, particularly single-family residences, in Lloydminster, a bi-provincial city in Canada. Lloydminster is a city of about 22,000 which straddles the provinces of Alberta and Saskatchewan. The two provinces are recognized for the dissimilarities in their political orientations. These dissimilarities are reflected in different taxation policies, different Medicare and health insurance policies and different auto insurance policies, which have given rise to a quantitative and qualitative split in the market for single-family residences in Lloydminster. This duality of the housing market is manifested in Saskatchewan's "affordability" and Alberta's "desirability." Alberta's tax policies have attracted "place entrepreneurs" to build upscale residences on its side for homeowners in high income brackets, who benefit from its tax policies. Saskatchewan's health care and auto insurance advantages have attracted those with such priorities and with moderate incomes. It is contended here that while distinct policies may have contributed to an uneven bi-provincial housing market, the disparity between the markets has been sustained and reinforced by all players who construct the housing reality through myths and perceptions as well as interpretations of policies and their underlying ideologies.     

The Valuation of Real Capital: A Random Walk down Kungsgatan

This paper analyzes the temporal pattern of prices for single-family housing. We estimate models of house price dynamics using a repeat sales framework, and we use the results to test for a random walk in asset prices. For eight large samples of housing transactions, representing essentially all house sales in Sweden during a 12-year period, we reject the hypothesis that house prices follow a random walk in favor of a model of first-order serial correlation.     

A prediction comparison of housing sales prices by parametric versus semi-parametric regressions

This study estimates a hedonic price function using a semi-parametric regression and compares the price prediction performance with conventional parametric models. This study utilizes a large data set representing 2595 single-family residential home sales between July 2000 and June 2002 from Pitt County, North Carolina. Data from Geographic Information Systems (GIS) are incorporated to account for locational attributes of the houses. The results show that the semi-parametric regression outperforms the parametric counterparts in both in-sample and out-of-sample price predictions, indicating that the semi-parametric model can be useful for measurement and prediction of housing sales prices.     

Paradigm Shifts in Social Housing after Welfare-State Transformation: Learning from the German Experience

Welfare-state transformation and entrepreneurial urban politics in Western welfare states since the late 1970s have yielded converging trends in the transformation of the dominant Fordist paradigm of social housing in terms of its societal function and institutional and spatial form. In this article I draw from a comparative case study on two cities in Germany to show that the resulting new paradigm is simultaneously shaped by the idiosyncrasies of the country's national housing regime and local housing policies. While German governments have successively limited the societal function of social housing as a legitimate instrument only for addressing exceptional housing crises, local policies on providing and organizing social housing within this framework display significant variation. However, planning and design principles dominating the spatial forms of social housing have been congruent. They may be interpreted as both an expression of the marginalization of social housing within the restructured welfare housing regime and a tool of its implementation according to the logics of entrepreneurial urban politics.     

Three-rate property taxation and housing construction

This paper examines the effect of property taxation on housing construction. In 2001, Finnish municipalities were allowed to levy an extra property tax on undeveloped land zoned for housing. Municipalities that adopted the new tax instrument have a three-rate tax property tax system with different tax rates on land before development, land after development and buildings. The remaining municipalities have a two-rate system with a uniform land tax and a building tax. A theoretical model of decisions by landowners suggests that the pre-development land tax ought to lead to faster development, but also the density of development may be affected. In the two-rate system land tax is neutral. The empirical results suggest that landowners respond to the tax incentives. Municipalities that adopted the three-rate property tax system saw an increase in single-family housing starts of roughly 12 percent.     

Is there an equilibrating relationship between house prices and replacement cost? Empirical evidence from Berlin

It is a feature of competitive markets with forward-looking participants that a good’s benefit and its production cost are equalized in equilibrium and that no resources are wasted during the adjustment process. For housing markets, there is mixed evidence whether they meet this standard of allocative efficiency. Based on a unique data set with rich information on prices and cost, we examine the market for single-family houses in Germany’s capital Berlin. At the aggregate market level, we find that prices and cost tend to equalize in the long run. Short-run adjustment appears to be sufficiently fast and properly anticipated to prevent systematic excess profit opportunities. At the cross sectional level of individual houses, we find support that resources are allocated efficiently between different market segments. Taken together, our results provide sufficient evidence that the market in Berlin is efficient.     

The use of proxy variables in housing price analysis

This paper presents a reexamination of data used by Berry to study housing prices in Chicago. The detailed data on 275 single-family houses are used to test the proposition that the tax assessment on improvements is a good proxy for the attributes of the houses. It is shown that the test used by Berry is irrelevant for the question of omitted variables bias, and the correct test is presented. It is concluded that the proxy corrects for a bias in the coefficient of percent black population, but increases the negative bias in the coefficient of percent Latino population.     

新中国成立初期城市私有住宅公有化过程及其启示

当前,我国城市住宅短缺问题突出,政府城市住宅政策尚不完善。有鉴于此,回顾和总结新中国成立初期的城市住房政策就颇有意义。在新中国成立初期,我国同样面临城市住宅短缺的问题。当时,私有住宅占城市住宅总量的绝大多数。中国政府采取两步走的公有化策略,公私并存和社会主义改造。通过对城市住宅的公有化,政府手中掌握了大量的城市住宅资源,有利于管理和分配。但在公有化过程中私人房主的利益一而再地被忽视和损害。回看新中国成立初期的那段历史,可以为我们今天城市住宅制度的制定提供一些启示,一是,住宅制度的制定需遵循经济规律;二是,满足百姓的住宅需求是住宅制度的根本目标。     

Urban residential land rent function: An alternative Muth-Mills model

The urban residential land rent function has been studied extensively in the field of urban economics, and the land rent function of Muth and Mills is considered to be one of the typical functional forms which is used in empirical studies. However, the model of Muth and Mills simply assumed the demand function for housing services to be a power function of income, which gives rise to a question. The main purpose of this paper is to derive an alternative form of the urban residential land rent function which is consistent with the utility maximization behavior of consumers and to discuss the estimation procedure of the derived land rent function.     

农民工住房问题研究述评

对农民工住房问题的研究,首先基于对农民工概念的界定,界定的关键点应在于农村户籍身份和所从事工作的非农业生产性质,不宜加入在劳动关系中所处的地位、收入来源等判定标准。国外的研究中,没有与农民工完全相同的概念,研究成果中具有参考意义的是对移民工人、城市贫民住房问题的研究,因而可借鉴性有限。国内的研究中,多侧重于农民工住房及住房政策的现存问题分析与对策研究;研究方法以个别城市的定量分析,以及逻辑推演的定性分析为主;结论建议集中于将农民工的住房保障纳入城镇住房保障体系,尚欠缺从统筹城乡的视角对农民工住房问题的深入研究。     

The effect of property taxes on urban areas

The effects of property taxes on urban areas are studied relative to a local wage tax. The changes in urban population and in the consumption and price of housing are determined in cities with various types of production sectors. Distortions in the composition of housing and residential density patterns are also reported. Examples are constructed to quantify the size of the changes and test whether property taxes are capitalized into land values.     

Hedonic price and depreciation indexes for residential housing: A longitudinal approach

An equilibrium price relation is derived for price changes in durable goods capable of generating a hedonic, or quality-corrected, price index, and an index of depreciation. The structure proposed is applicable particularly to housing markets, where longitudinal, or repeat-sale data are readily available from assessment or real estate sources. The separation permits not only the construction of a true price index, but also allows tests of various functional forms for depreciation, notably the geometric function. As an application of the proposed structure, estimates are presented for single-family dwellings in surburban London, Ontario, 1967–1975.     

New Geographies of Residential Capitalism: Financialization of the Turkish Housing Market Since the Early 2000s

The post‐2001 financial crisis era in Turkey gave rise to twin booms in housing construction and credit markets, both of which suffered from the subsequent debt crisis. The financial transformation of the economy in conjunction with state‐led urban legislation reform had significant effects on the housing market in terms of commodification of housing, countrywide construction activities and substantial increases in household debt and construction company loans. The changing role and function of the state as a direct provider of housing can be regarded as actually existing neoliberalism providing favourable conditions for financialization, as it ushered in the commodification of housing. The Turkish government, together with the government‐backed housing agency, metropolitan municipalities and publicly owned real‐estate investment company, has been active in nationwide housing construction and urban regeneration projects. This article argues that there is a lack of synchrony between the commodification of housing and the financialization of the household sector owing to the institutional setting of the mortgage system and structural macroeconomic problems. Rather, housing commodification has been accompanied by the financialization of the corporate sector through a steep rise in the external debt burden of construction companies.     

LAND MARKETS AND THE EFFECT OF REGULATION ON FORMAL-SECTOR DEVELOPMENT IN URBAN INDONESIA

Until recently, urban land and housing markets in Indonesia seemed to function well. Informal-sector development provided low-income housing affordably. Through government programs, formal-sector developers could build housing for all but the poor. Since 1989, however, daily conversation pictures land speculation as rampant and formal-sector housing as rising beyond the means of the middle class. Newspapers carry stories of conflicts between small landowners and large developers with government officials in between. This article investigates this situation by addressing two related questions: are urban land prices rising “too fast?”; how do land regulations and development practices affect costs, and who pays these costs? The article includes quantitative estimates of urban land prices, changes in urban land supply, movement of land through the permitting process, and the effect of development regulations on costs. Data come from a literature survey and interviews of some of the largest formal-sector developers in Indonesia. A principal finding concerns a development regulation called a “location permit” and the “social function” of land in Indonesian law. Although helpful as a means of assembling land in Indonesia's highly fragmented land markets, location permits allow formal-sector developers to hold land off the market and pay low prices to small landowners. Ultimately, the “social function” of land under Indonesian law holds down the price formal-sector developers pay for land, but not at the price at which they sell their product. The article concludes by proposing reforms to the regulatory process.     

城市发展与住房意愿支付价格

以城市在岗职工的平均劳动收入水平和反映城市生活质量的各类宜居性指标建立了中国35个主要城市的城市发展与住房需求关系的模型,并以此估计了城市住房意愿支付价格。实证结果表明,城市在岗职工的平均劳动收入水平和以各类宜居性指标反映的城市生活质量可以解释70%左右住房价格的城市间差异。虽然城市劳动收入对住房意愿支付价格的影响仍然很大,但随着社会经济的发展,中国主要城市的生活质量对住房意愿支付价格增长的贡献有逐步增大的趋势。     

The Financialization of Housing Production in Brussels

This article focuses on the financialization of housing production in the Brussels‐Capital Region, examining the increased presence and use of financial capital in housing production. Information collected by local administrations when granting building permits is used to undertake a large‐scale examination of companies involved in housing provision in Brussels in the 2000s in order to identify the origins of capital invested in housing development projects and to assess to what extent it can be considered as ‘financialized’. The use of this data set allows me to estimate the ‘market share’ of financial capital in housing production and to analyse the geography of these investments in the built environment. This spatial analysis also provides some insights for a discussion about the possible social consequences of this influx of financial capital into the urban space. The task of empirically ‘measuring’ financialization raises numerous methodological questions. A choice has to be made between a wide range of definitions, both for financial activities and the financialization process. Moreover, for the purpose of quantifying the phenomenon, these concepts are made operational and turned into indicators. In addition to providing information about the investment of financial capital in housing production and the concrete forms it may take in a city such as Brussels, I venture to suggest that this article also contributes to the methodological ‘toolbox’ available to researchers in the field of financialization.