The authors would like to extend their thanks to Ryden, Property Consultants and Chartered Surveyors, Edinburgh, and Scottish Property Network, University of Paisley, for their data input and co-operation. JPVI 16,3 298 penultimate section we discuss our empirical analysis. The final section highlights the key findings and discusses areas for further research. Principal determinants of office rent valuesAn office property as a heterogeneous good can be defined by a vector of characteristics or attributes which relate to its physical accommodation, location and tenure rights. The attributes in turn can be subdivided into the following categories:Physical accommodation Capacity: At its most basic this is the floor area of the office, although it will also be influenced by any constraints, for example a cellular layout, the building's structure places on design and layout. Modern offices normally provide the greatest flexibility in this regard by the provision of large floor plates.Internal accessibility: The significance of which floor an office suite is on is likely to be affected by the availability and the quality of a lift. Basements may also not be popular because of natural lighting difficulties. The existence of a reception area is usually an attractive feature.Internal services: The quality of office space is not easy to define. There is a considerable range of potential internal services which add value although to different degrees. These include air conditioning/heating, raised floors to enable computer and telephone cables, security systems, lighting, internal sound insulation, cooking, toilet and washing facilities and carpeting. The British Council for Offices(1994) prescribes detailed ideal specifications for which a potential occupier is likely to pay a premium.Physical structure: The cladding and standard of the exterior and structure are important both to the image the occupier is trying to project, and to subsequent repair and maintenance expenditure. Double glazing also improves the internal working environment. A major influence is the age of the building, for example prewar buildings are mainly of solid construction with a large number of load-bearing walls. In the case of older offices, whether they have been refurbished is a key attribute. The provision of internal car parking spaces is an added attraction to an occupier. Location Spatial relationships:The choice of an office also brings a set of spatial relationships. Within a central business district (CBD) key relationships determining rental value could be distance from the most prestigious office addresses (see below), proximity to the intercity train station, links with commuter train and bus networks, or closeness to the main shopping centre.Business environment: The CBD provides agglomeration economies by giving access to a common pool of services and labour. Despite the advances in information technology, and the subsequent changes in office practice, the CBD

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We consider whether public recreational open space is a substitute for private open space by testing whether price effects from proximity to an urban park are increasing in housing density. Aberdeen, Scotland features three owneroccupied residential property types: detached housing, nondetached housing and flats. We examine property sales within 800 m of five city parks. We find flat prices increase with additional proximity to parks, but there are generally no price effects from park proximity for lower density housing types. The results suggest that open space policy must consider the scale and density of surrounding urban development.

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PurposeThe purpose of this paper is to address the variation of efficiency of local office markets. It has long been argued that as data in the property market are based on valuations, it has a tendency toward smoothing or stickiness. The accuracy of valuations is shown to be partially dependent on local variable factors such as the extent of information, the variability of local cycles and the heterogeneity of the stock. This paper assesses the efficiency of local office markets in nine cities of the UK by estimating unsmoothed annual time series of rents and returns and comparing with the original valuations.Design/methodology/approachThe paper uses an econometric approach to identify true unobserved returns from observed smoothed data. It uses desmoothing techniques and compares the volatility of smoothed and desmoothed underlying returns. It then looks for autocorrelation over time in the errors where the presence of autocorrelation rejects the assumption of market efficiency.FindingsExamining, regional city office markets, the results suggest that financial centres have the least efficient markets because of their high level of variability. Other provincial cities are characterised by weak‐form efficiency. Market cyclicality is found to be a key factor affecting valuation accuracy.Research limitations/implicationsResearch in regional markets is often constrained by shortness and low frequency of time series observations. This limits the analysis and the ways in which it could be developed. Issues also relate to the method of desmoothing adopted.Practical implicationsKey financial centre are found to be less efficient markets than other cities. Thus, price changes fully embody all previous information in regional centres but not in London or Edinburgh. Periods of significant cyclical volatility tend to cause valuation inaccuracy and pricing problems.Social implicationsThere are spillovers from inefficiencies in property market pricing that can affect other sectors of society directly (through increased costs) or indirectly (by contributing to macroeconomic cyclicality).Originality/valueThis is the first paper to explicitly consider the efficiency of regional city office markets and to identify the true unobserved returns series in each city office market. Its findings, perhaps unexpectedly, suggest that most regional city office markets are more efficient at processing pricing information than London.