Is the Real Estate Market of New Housing Stock Influenced by Urban Vibrancy?

Abstract

The attractiveness and vibrancy of an urban area are very complex aspects that both Public Administrations and real estate developers and construction companies have to carefully consider in order to correctly address their investments and sustainable urban development projects. The aim of this paper is to study urban vibrancy and its relationship with the neighbourhood services and the real estate market of new housing stock. Spatial analyses are performed to study the influence of the Neighbourhood Services Index (NeSI) and its Principal Components (PCs) on listing prices and the construction activity. Spatial autoregressive (SAR) models are applied both with lattice data and data points, in order to manage spatial dependence and to identify the variables that significantly influence housing prices and construction site density. Findings highlight that the NeSI significantly influences the real estate market of new housing stock and that above the analysed neighbourhood services and the retail activities have a great, significant, and positive influence on the density of housing construction sites. The results of this study represent a real support for both public and private bodies to identify the most and least attractive and vibrant urban areas and to deal with important aspects of urban complexity.

Architectural Quality and the Housing Market: Values of the Late Twentieth Century Built Heritage

“…It should be remembered that building production in the tury was based on a segmentation of demand by income level cific types, well represented by the cadastral categories (classy tributed in certain areas of the city [4]. In recent years, the va Therefore, new social models are emerging in the Turin real estate market influenced by greater environmental awareness; in turn, there is a simultaneous loss of interest in locations without neighborhood services, despite the presence of natural amenities (e.g., the Turin hills) [5]. This change, of course, is generally due to modifications in the structure of families and the aging of the population; while, recently, the COVID-19 pandemic crisis has also led to a change in the preferences of buyers looking for larger houses (to have a studio) and with balconies or terraces, if not gardens.…”

“…This change, of course, is generally due to modifications in the structure of families and the aging of the population; while, recently, the COVID-19 pandemic crisis has also led to a change in the preferences of buyers looking for larger houses (to have a studio) and with balconies or terraces, if not gardens. In this context, driven by an increasingly selective demand, which favors urban areas characterized by urban vibrancy [5,6], architectural and construction qualities seem to be partially neglected.…”

“…In this study, the city of Turin was used as a case study (Figure 2), although this methodological approach can be generalized and transferred, with the necessary modifications, to any other study area. This research is one of the many conducted on the real estate market of this city from different points of view: internal migration flows [4,58,59], submarkets observation and analysis [60,61], neighborhood vibrancy and vulnerability [5][6][7][8], the EPC labels of the existing housing stock [62][63][64], and cadastral policies and property taxation [65].…”

“…Previous research [4] on Turin has shown that the system of values in the real estate of the second half of the 20th century, today, no longer exists. At the time, the system reflected the distribution of income and the social division of space, while today, the relation is not so linear, and dictated more by social vulnerability and vibrancy dynamics [5][6][7][8].…”

EPC Labels and Building Features: Spatial Implications over Housing Prices

“…Besides the abovementioned researches, other recent experiences on the topic are assumed in the background as being specifically aimed to calculate the spatial autocorrelation in property prices in the city of Turin; in these studies, spatial analyses are proposed to detect the presence of spatial dependence between different kinds of indicators and to manage the spatial latent variables in the property price determination process [55][56][57][58].…”