Focuses on the effect of both proximity and size of shopping centres on surrounding residential property values, using hedonic modelling. States that the data bank consists of a subset of some 4,000 single‐detached, owner‐occupied housing units transacted all over the Quebec Urban Community territory between January 1990 and December 1991. Tests several functional forms and uses up to 60 descriptors. Reveals that in line with previous studies, findings indicate that shopping‐centre size exerts a positive contributory effect on values; they also tend to confirm the non‐monotonicity of the price‐distance function. Concludes that, in that respect, resorting to the gamma function for distance variables yields most interesting results and provides consistent estimates of optimal distances for various shopping‐centre size categories.

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Hedonic modelling, Implicit prices, Heterogeneity, GWR, Household profile, R20, C50,

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This paper investigates the analytical potential of factor analysis for sorting out neighbourhood and access factors in hedonic modelling using a simulation procedure that combines GIS technology and spatial statistics. An application to the housing market of the Quebec Urban Community (575,000 in population; study based on some 2,400 cottages transacted from 1993 to 1997) illustrates the relevance of this approach. In the first place, accessibility from each home to selected activity places is computed on the basis of minimum travelling time using the TransCAD transportation-oriented GIS software. The spatial autocorrelation issue is then addressed and a general modelling procedure developed. Following a five-step approach, property specifics are first introduced in the model; proximity and neighbourhood attributes are then successively added on. Finally, factor analyses are performed on each set of access and census variables, thereby reducing to six principal components an array of 49 individual attributes. Substituting the resulting factors for the initial descriptors leads to high model performances, controlled collinearity and stable hedonic prices, although remaining spatial autocorrelation is still detected in the residuals.