Developments in Urban Housing and Property Markets

Abstract

Real estate, encompassing housing, land and commercial property, is a key driver of the urban economy-in terms of economic development, the distribution of opportunities across space and through the evolution of the local built environment. Certain aspects of real estate research are not directly related to urban issues but, through finance and investment decisions, for instance, they do have a major bearing on our towns and cities. Thus, a Review Issue on urban real estate is timely and important. This paper both introduces and provides an assessment of the articles within this Review Issue. First, the paper sets the issue in its wider context. Secondly, it then pulls out the main themes from each contribution before elaborating on the cross-cutting themes that emerge from the collected papers taken together. The final main section outlines a forward-looking research agenda for real estate analysis.

Intra‐Urban migration and housing submarkets: theory and evidence

“…Indeed, researchers continue to search for innovative modelling techniques that might help explain the existence of phenomena including multiple equilibria and market segmentation within local housing markets (Gibb & Hoesli, 2003). Interesting examples of recent innovative modelling work include the application of neural network analysis (Kauko et al, 2002), the preliminary analysis of the utility of cellular automata and discrete choice models (Meen & Meen, 2003) and the application of advanced spatial econometric techniques to the analysis of local house prices (Pavlov, 2000).…”

Explaining the spatial variation in housing prices: an economic geography approach

“…Finally, we estimate the steady state expression of our model for average municipalitylevel housing prices for all 589 Belgian municipalities in 2001. 3 This article also finds motivation in the call for more research about the fundamentals of housing prices, which was recently put forward in literature overviews by Gibb and Hoesli (2003), OECD (2005) and Hornstein (2009) among others. Needless to say a better insight into the fundamental determinants of housing prices, including spatial differences in them, is useful for detecting and understanding bubbles in housing markets.…”

“…A large number of studies looking into the determinants of housing prices have been undertaken in recent decades (for recent overviews, see Gibb and Hoesli, 2003;OECD, 2005;Hornstein, 2009). It is obvious that apart from geographical barriers there are other determinants of housing prices which we have to take into account in order to correctly assess the impact of geographical factors.…”

“…For example,Ottensmann et al (2008) study the effect of both distance and journey time to an economic centre Hamnett (2009). studies housing price differences in inner London and explains the changing housing price patterns in terms of spatially-displaced demand.3 In an overview of the housing literature,Gibb and Hoesli (2003) call a coherent economic analysis of the spatial dimension of real estate markets a major research topic. 4 Since we are mainly interested in the geographical determinants of housing prices -that vary less over time -we do not explicitly consider time-varying variables such as interest rates in the literature overview or in our own contribution.…”

An Analytic Hierarchy Process (AHP) framework for property valuation to identify the ideal 2050 portfolio mixes in EU-27 countries with shrinking populations

“…For Din et al (2001) rational decision-making is a must when dealing with this situation. For Chang et al (2011) and Gibb and Hoesli (2003), there is a high necessity for sense making of managerial decisions and strategies to protect asset value and match the desires of populations. The European Parliament, European Commission, European Council, Urban Housing and Ageing Intergroup, European Regional Development Fund, College of European Commissioners are a few examples of organisations working to combine the adaption of current dwellings with the requirements of shifting populations in the European Union (Boulmier 2012).…”