Land Values, Land Use, and the First Chicago Zoning Ordinance

This article examines whether the pattern of urban land use should have been regulated by local government in the 1920s, the decade in which many cities adopted their first zoning ordinances. The study is based on the assumption that land values are influenced by the mix of land use on the block. Conditions for land-value maximization are derived, and the circumstances under which land-use zoning can increase land values are discussed. Empirical land-value and land-use functions are estimated for Chicago in 1921, two years before the first Chicago zoning ordinance was adopted. The empirical results for land values imply that the land-use zoning system adopted in 1923 could not have brought about a general increase in land values. The empirical results for land use document the regularities in the use of land prior to the introduction of zoning.     

The Pricing of Lake Lots

This article reveals aspects of lakefront property pricing especially with respect to lot frontage and depth. A clearer understanding of how these lot dimensions affect price should be of interest to those engaged in lake development, land use control, valuation, and marketing. A data set with eighty observations of vacant Lake Michigan residential properties sales is used. The unique geography of northwest Michigan provides an opportunity to tackle empirical issues associated with zoning when zoning is correlated with lot attributes, such as lot topography.     

Restrictive land covenants

Even though land-use convenants are a pervasive feature in residential land markets, they are typically subsumed into the economist's picture of zoning and related land-use regulation. In contrast to the traditional approach, the premise of this study is that land covenants differ from zoning in important respects. This study examines the characteristics of covenants as an institution and why it exists as a distinct method of private control in land markets. The approach taken here emphasizes the role of credible commitment in explaining why covenants differ from both zoning and private contracts among individuals. The paper also examines why covenants tend to vary spatially within urban areas, presenting two theories to evaluate the evidence from an urban housing market.     

Valuing long-term leases: The option to redevelop

Long-term leases on property are popular in many jurisdictions, both with private vendors and with local governments who want to retain future control over land use. A puzzling issue for vendors and purchasers has been how to value these leased properties relative to fee-simple properties. Simple present-value models suggest that there should be little difference between the price of fee-simple land and the price of long-term leases. Transaction prices in Canada on 80-year to 100-year residential leases, however, are 20 percent to 40 percent less than comparable fee-simple properties. We outline a financial model for valuing leased properties. The value of the option to upgrade or redevelop is considered. We show that the large part of the discount of leased properties from fee-simple properties can be explained by this option to redevelop.     

Development Value: A Real Options Approach Using Empirical Data

This paper combines an empirical methodology and a theoretical options approach to determine the real option values of development and delay for vacant parcels of land in the City of Chicago. A theoretical options model provides an option price that incorporates future uncertainty. The data allow for disaggregation down to specific land use categories and results show option values vary across zoning categories and within zoning categories for specific land uses.     

住房耐用品、土地市场分割与货币失踪之谜

2008年国际金融危机后,我国M2供给增幅远高于CPI上涨幅度,这一现象被学界称为“货币失踪之谜”。本文构建了一个两部门新凯恩斯货币模型来研究这一问题。当外部需求下降后,央行降低利率以提振经济,房地产部门和非房地产部门同时扩张。由于住房属于耐用消费品,具有一定的金融属性,其需求对利率变化更敏感。利率下降后,住房需求相对普通消费品需求上升更多。因为存在土地市场分割,商住用地供给弹性较小,住房需求上升导致商住用地价格上升较多,地价上涨提升了房地产企业的抵押融资能力,房地产部门进一步扩张。普通消费品需求对利率反应小,需求较弱导致工业用地价格上升幅度较小,非房地产部门抵押融资能力小幅提升。因此,非房地产部门产出和CPI只温和扩张。Ramsey最优货币政策模拟表明,只有实现了房地产部门与非房地产部门均衡发展,才能实现社会福利最大化。     

城镇住宅用地供应与人口变化的时空协调性研究——以湖南省14个市州为例

采用Tapio方法和区位熵法,分别构建住宅用地供求的脱钩指数和空间供求结构指数,测度2009-2017年湖南省14个市州住宅用地供应与人口变化的时序协调性和空间协调性。结果发现：全省住宅用地供应与城镇人口增长存在时序不协调,除长沙市、邵阳市和岳阳市住宅用地供应与人口增速属于扩张性挂钩外,其它城市均表现为扩张相对负脱钩,甚至部分市州在2010年出现绝对负脱钩。不同市州的不同类型的住宅用地（普通商品房和安居工程用地）供应与人口变化存在不同程度的空间分配失调。     

The Structure of Chinese Urban Land Prices: Estimates from Benchmark Land Price Data

Taking the recent benchmark land prices published by the Chinese city governments, the paper estimates commercial and residential land price curves of Chinese cities using cross-sectional data, controlling for urban population size and income level. The urban land leasing price–distance relationship is estimated based on the argument that monocentric urban structure is representative for Chinese cities. Both population size and income level are found to positively affect urban land price and price–distance gradients. Commercial land prices are higher than residential land prices except in suburbs or outer central urban areas, where the land prices of different uses converge. In most situations, commercial use price gradients are larger than those of residential use.

Business cycle implications of mortgage spreads

How do aggregate quantities at the business cycle frequency respond to shocks to the spread between residential mortgage rates and government bonds? Using a structural VAR approach, we find that mortgage spread shocks impact the real economy by both economically and statistically significant magnitudes: a 100 basis point decline in the spread causes a peak increase in consumption, residential investment and GDP by 1.6 percent, 6.2 percent and 1.9 percent, respectively. Presumably, these effects are magnified when the policy rate is held fixed, as was the case in the US during the recent implementation of unconventional monetary policy.     

Distortions Resulting from Residential Land Use Controls in Metropolitan Areas

Residential land use controls in metropolitan areas are intended to and typically do restrict housing supply and inevitably raise housing prices. This paper estimates the effects of metropolitan area land use controls on housing prices, employing a remarkable data set compiled by Gyourko, Saiz and Summers. We embed the estimates in a four equation model that estimates the effects of the resulting high housing prices on metropolitan population, real incomes and employment.     

Optimal fiscal zoning that distorts housing consumption

When entrants to Tiebout-type communities face limited alternatives, local governments possess some monopoly power over the use of land within their boundaries. One way they exercise that power is through fiscal zoning which attempts to extract tax revenues from newcomers in excess of the cost of the local services they consume. Ideally, the community would like to do this by regulating the newcomers' tax bases, but in practice this is impossible. Thus, indirect methods such as minimum lot size zoning are necesary. Since it is not possible to control all inputs into the production of housing, however, zoning is distortionary. This article examines the impact of the distortions of minimum lot size zoning on the ability of local governments to implement fiscal zoning.     

The value of risk in real estate markets

In this article we test the urban asset pricing model of Capozza and Sick (1988) and focus on the empirical dimensions of the effects of risk on urban land prices. The effects of systematic and unsystematic risk are distinguished in the model which incorporates the value of the option to convert land to urban uses into the pricing of urban real estate. We find the value of systematic risk in our Canadian urban areas to be negative and highly statistically significant. We find that approximately 2.5 percent of the value of houses in our sample arises from systematic risk. In our sample, unsystematic risk is a larger proportion of total risk than systematic risk. Therefore, most of the effect of total risk may be ascribed to unsystematic risk. The effect of total risk on land prices is illustrated through the irreversibility premia estimates. These premia vary greatly in size and statistical significance. Thus, the effect of unsystematic risk is highly city specific. In the two regions where the irreversibility premia are statistically significant, it accounts for 22 percent and 53 percent of the average housing price; thus, unsystematic risk can be a very important determinant of housing prices.These results highlight the importance of risk in determining urban land prices. The value of the option to convert land to urban uses imparts considerable value to developed land and must be considered when evaluating interurban area price differences.     

National Transaction-based Land Price Indices

Using data on a large sample of land transactions, this paper develops quarterly national land price indices for residential, commercial, and industrial land use categories over the 20?years period from 1991 to 2009. We find significant differences in variability across land uses, with residential exhibiting the most volatility. Our particular interest in this paper is to compare intertemporal land prices with other prominant real estate indices. In all cases, the transaction-based land price indices leads the other indices.     

An empirical examination of the externalities of neighborhood churches on housing values

Recently, establishment of churches in residential neighborhoods has become controversial. This study is the first to address the issue of whether a neighborhood church positively or negatively affects the value of nearby single-family properties. This hypothesis is tested with a standard hedonic pricing model, using a sample of 469 sales transactions drawn from a large metropolitan area. Nonchurch effects are held constant with a standard set of housing-related variables. A distance variable is included to measure the direction and magnitude of the externality effect. Results indicate the effect of churches on sales price is negative up to approximately 850 feet. The authors suggest that empirical evidence such as this will inform both public and private parties involved in land use decisions relating to neighborhood churches.     

The Investment Incentive Effects of Land Use Regulations

This paper provides an overview and synthesis of the results from recent studies of how different types of land use regulations affect land development incentives. The presentation is nontechnical and focuses on uncovering general principles for the dynamic effects of such policies. It explains why the risk of regulation leads to faster development of unregulated land and how the effect on structural densities reflects the underlying pattern of growth in the demand for land by competing uses. It also discusses how the general pattern of timing and density responses for regulated property reflect the same growth patterns in demand.     

Roads, Land Use, and Deforestation: A Spatial Model Applied to Belize

Rural roads promote economic development, but they also facilitatedeforestation. To explore this tradeoff, this article developsa spatially explicit model of land use and estimates probabilitiesof alternative land uses as a function of land characteristicsand distance to market using a multinomial logit specificationof this model. Controls are incorporated for the endogeneityof road placement. The model is applied to data for southern Belize, an area experiencingrapid expansion of both subsistence and commercial agriculture,using geographic information system (GIS) techniques to selectsample points at 1-kilometer intervals. Market access, landquality, and tenure status affect the probability of agriculturalland use synergistically, having differential effects on thelikelihood of commercial versus semisubsistence farming. Theresults suggest that road building in areas with agriculturallypoor soils and low population densities may be a "lose-lose"proposition, causing habitat fragmentation and providing loweconomic returns.     

Two-Rate Property Tax Effects on Land Development

Economists have long understood that the conventional property tax causes the housing stock to be smaller than it would be in the presence of a nondistortionary tax such as a land or site value tax. This article brings together the results from models of housing development timing and structural density with the results of a modern model of a graded property tax in an urban setting. The combination of results is used to investigate the effects of a communitys movement from a property tax to a two-rate tax system where land is taxed at a higher rate than structures. The conditions under which increasing reliance on a land or site value tax will increase housing structural density and speed of development are identified and examined. Policy implications are drawn.     

Land-use zoning in a local economy with optimal property taxes and public expenditures

A three-sector, open-city framework is used to study the impact of changes in land-use zoning on a local economy. In addition to the customary direct supply effects, a rezoning prompts changes in local property tax rates, public expenditures, and the location decisions of households and firms. Simulations are used to trace these general equilibrium adjustments. The final effects of a residentialto-commercial rezoning on crucial local economic variables, including residential and commercial site rents, property tax rates and the mix of public services, may contrast sharply with popular expectations based solely on a partial equilibrium analysis.     

A Housing Price Model with Endogenous Externality Location: A Study of Mobile Home Parks

This research explores the impact of mobile home parks on the value of single-family homes. This is the first study that empirically analyzes the effect of mobile home parks on property values. The empirical methodology used attempts to address the potential identification problem that exists within this study; it is possible that mobile home parks are located in areas of relatively lower land values or next to other land uses that impact property values. To address this identification problem, mobile home park locations are treated as endogenous within the model and the mobile home parks are identified as being located in residential or non-residential areas. The results suggest a negative effect on the selling price of single-family dwellings in close proximity to mobile home parks located in residential areas.     

Government Interference and the Efficiency of the Land Market in China

Municipal governments in China established direct control of the supply of urban land in August 2004. This paper examines whether this government action mitigates the efficiency of the residential land market. Using a unique data set of detailed land and residential community transactions with manually collected location information for residential land lots in seven Chinese cities, this paper analyzes the relationship between the land lease prices and residential property prices from the first quarter of 2001 to the fourth quarter of 2007. Results indicate that property prices determined land prices both before and after 2004:3, but the effect was significantly weaker after 2004:3. This is consistent with the hypothesis that the market for residential land became less efficient after municipal governments gained direct control of the land supply.