Behavioural biases in real estate investment: a literature review and future research agenda

Abstract

Psychological aspects of human nature cause behavioural biases and can lead to decisions that differ from what is expected based solely on rational analysis. The effects of behavioural biases on financial markets like stocks and mutual funds have been studied previously, but real estate has yet to receive much attention. The existing works in the real estate domain have focused on different biases, but no study has examined the works already done to provide concise documentation of these past works. Thus, this article is an earnest attempt to fill that gap. This paper reviews the articles which were sourced from Scopus and the Web of Science database, published between 1980 and 2022. The PRISMA model led to the inclusion of 86 articles for the review. Analysis revealed that anchoring bias, loss aversion, and herding bias have been studied extensively. On the other hand, biases like gambler’s fallacy, familiarity bias, framing bias, home bias, confirmation bias and mental accounting have been less explored. The paper identifies the substantial gaps in the existing studies, giving avenues for future exploration. The key ones are, firstly only a few biases have been studied extensively and many biases are less explored, particularly using primary data. This provides a vast available space for future work. Secondly, studies in developing countries are fewer, which needs to be addressed. Lastly, studies need to explore the interplay of different biases to create a more robust model that can explain the effect of these biases. The paper gives a conceptual understanding of different biases and what factors affect them. Also, it will help policymakers strategize their business and mitigate the negative effects of biases.