Effects on Housing Prices of Urban Attraction and Labor-Market Accessibility

Abstract

Through a hedonic approach this study primarily focuses on how house prices vary systematically with respect to some general spatial structure characteristics in a Norwegian region. The introduction of a gravity based labor market accessibility measure contributes significantly to explain variation in housing prices, also in a model formulation where the distance from the city center is accounted for. Based on these results we suggest a distinction between an urban attraction effect and a labor market accessibility effect. Quantitatively, the two distinct effects are found to contribute about equally to intraregional variation in housing prices.

Describing Inequalities in Access to Employment and the Associated Geography of Wellbeing

“…This is important since urban theory does not give us precise guidance on how to weight distance vs. size of employment node. Osland and Thorsen (2008) can rise with proximity to employment nodes but then decline as one approaches close proximity.…”

“…The variables contained in A are: dwelling type (house or flat, conversion, detached, semi-detached, detached bungalow, detached villa), internal characteristics (traditional construction, bay window, number of bedrooms, number of public rooms, ensuite bathrooms, gas central heating, whether the property needs upgrading, whether the property is described as luxurious), external characteristics (whether plot is measured in acres, whether there is a garden, garage, parking and notable views), CBD is included to test whether there are any effects of proximity to CBD other than the access to employment effect (Brueckner et al, 1999;Osland and Thorsen, 2008 submarket boundaries-defined in terms of dwelling substitutability-may be considerably more fragmented, nuanced and complex than those imposed using predetermined jurisdictions. Note also that the submarkets used here represent relatively large areas, and so it is possible that there will exist uncaptured amenity values and unobserved spatial variation in dwelling attributes within these submarkets (Osland, 2010).…”

The suitability of hedonic models for cost-benefit analysis: Evidence from commuting flows

“…The precise specification of the function is guided both by what data are available as well as previous research on housing markets in neighbouring regions (Osland and Thorsen, 2008;Osland, 2010;McArthur et al, Forthcoming). Based on this previous work, a log-log specification is chosen where the natural logarithms of the dependent and continuous independent variables are used.…”

“…The first variable is the travelling time to the central business district, which is interpreted as an urban attraction effect. Secondly, we measure accessibility to the labour market (Osland and Thorsen, 2008). The third spatially related variable is the Euclidean distance to the coastline.…”

“…There are a number of ways in which this can be achieved. Osland and Thorsen (2008) estimate the accessibility measure parameters within the hedonic house price model. In this paper, it is possible to do this for the measure accounting only for distance, but not for the measure including pecuniary costs.…”