Purpose Focusing on the externality effects of historic districts, this paper aims to assess and compare the impact of historic district designation on the value of residential vacant land property. Design/methodology/approach Hedonic regression is used to analyze data from 4,233 residential vacant site transactions to measure the influence of historic district designation on the price of residential vacant site properties. Findings Results support established theory and research on other residential property types, showing a significant and positive relationship between designation in a historic district and property prices. Residential vacant sites located in a designated historic district sold at a 10-11 per cent premium compared to similar vacant sites not located in a historic district. Originality/value This is the first empirical study of the influence of historic districts on residential vacant land property. The paper extends limited previous literature on the externality effects of historic districts through detailed analysis of a large Australian housing market (Brisbane).

The housing market is heavily regulated by multiple layers of external control. • The debate as to the ideal level and composition of regulations such as Demolition Control Precincts (DCPs) is ever present amongst governments, developers, environmentalists and property owners. • This paper proceeds on the basis that the existence of DCPs is not debated. This research interest lies with the effects of DCPs. • Previous research conducted has not provided a definitive explanation of the effects of DCPs on property values and the housing market in general (Heintzelman and Altieri 2013). • The impacts of historical preservation designation have not been empirically examined in Australia. Exploring and empirically testing the impacts are crucial. • The question, therefore, arises: What effects do municipal government urban planning regulations, and specifically historical preservation regulations have on the value of properties.

Dwellings of historic value offer qualities that benefits the owner or user, or the society in general. Historic preservation involve use of different policies including push and pull strategies to help protect and manage historic valuable dwellings for present and future generations. The majority of previous studies aiming to assess the impact of historic preservation on housing values employ hedonic pricing models to control for the heterogeneous nature of dwellings. These studies show deviant results and cannot, however conclude whether the observed historic preservation premium are due to a policy effect because it is likely to include a heritage effect due to unobserved characteristics that got the dwelling historic preserved in the first place. This study expands upon previous studies by introducing a unique dataset, which combines data of historic preserved dwellings in Oslo, Norway, and data from the housing market from 1990 to 2017, allowing us to study sales prices for the same dwellings both before and after the action of historic preservation. We further address the omitted variable bias by estimating a two-way fixed effects model including a differences-in-differences estimator. Our results suggest a policy premium of about 4%. Moreover, results suggest that the dwellings subject to the strictest policy hold a lower policy premium than the dwellings subject to the less strict policy, what implies quite clear policy recommendations. ¤ Table note: Missing values in the case of year of construction. Pre (post) historic preservation: 2 (13) in the case of historic preserved and 3 (4) in the case of control. Size is measured in square meters.