Housing Transaction Data Research Articles

The Financial Crisis and Diverging House Prices: Evidence from the Copenhagen Metropolitan Area

This paper investigates the development of house prices in Copenhagen in the period 1994-2013, while paying special attention to the heterogeneous impact of the boom and bust periods along the dimensions of housing type (single vs multifamily housing), geography and quality. To allow for price developments that can differ by quality, we use a recently developed generalization of the conventional Muth model that assumes a constant unit price across the quality spectrum. It allows us to separately consider the development of house prices and quality in Copenhagen neighbourhoods. Moreover, we investigate the validity of the common assumption of a constant unit price and reject it decisively. We use detailed housing transaction data for the greater Copenhagen area. We show that the housing boom of the 2000’s and the bust that followed hit the lowest quality segments significantly harder than the high quality segments of the housing market.

뉴타운 사업의 지정과 해제과정이 인접지역 주택가격에 미치는 영향 - 창신·숭인 뉴타운 지구를 대상으로 -

In this study, we aim to analyze price impacts of a Newtown project on nearby housing markets in Changsin Sungin Newtown in Seoul, Korea. Newtown project launched by Seoul Metropolitan Government in 2002, is a neighborhood redevelopment program addressing both housing shortage and deteriorating infrastructure. Using hierarchical linear modeling structured by transaction time, with monthly housing transaction data from January 2006 to April 2016, we investigate the effects of a Newtown project on housing prices within and outside of its boundary along the process of designation to withdrawal. In general, we found a positive influence of Newtown within area. In case of multi-family housing and apartment, the market transaction property value is higher by, on average, 12.2% and 16.6% respectively within the Newtown boundary, and -10.9% and 3.3% in the within -500m boundary, and -7% and -4.6% in the within -100m boundary compared to the specified control group. In transaction-time specific analysis of the effect, we found that the average price of multi-family housing within the Newtown boundary were higher by 30-40% than their counterparts before the Newtown designation, but fell down from that point, then the premium becomes negligible toward the withdrawal. On the other hand, in the 500m boundary we found that average price of multi-family housing were lower by 14-18%, but it rose up from the start(2006.1) to withdrawal. In case of apartment housing the prices were higher by 5-10% within the Newtown boundary. It also slightly fell down at the announcement of the designation by 10-20% in the 500m boundary(<500m, within 500m zone, excluding the Newtown) and 100m boundary(<1000m, within 1000m zone, excluding the 500m zone).

Concurrent Ownership Restrictions in Singapore's Housing Markets

Demand restrictions are used by government as a policy measure to curb price increases in overheating markets. Singapore’s government implemented demand restriction policies in 2011 and 2013 together with other cooling measures to disallow private housing owners from buying a public housing flat, while concurrently owning a private house. However, the policies do not prohibit public housing owners from upgrading to private houses, if they meet the occupation criteria set on their existing public housing flats. This paper sets up a policy experiment to test the asymmetric responses of these two groups of buyers in relation to the policy shocks by examining price variations in their housing purchases in the private housing markets. We use the sample of private housing transaction data between 2005 and 2015, and find significant and positive price effects, which are estimated at about 2.4% and 1.8% in 2010 and 2013, respectively, on private houses bought by public housing buyers relative to private housing buyers in the post-policy periods. The results affirm the asymmetric effects of the demand restriction policies on the two groups of buyers, and the price differences in their purchases are reflective of price elasticity of the policies on private housing buyers. For public housing buyers, the price premiums they pay for private housing are consistent with the upward mobility motives.

Social Networks and Housing Markets

We document that the recent house price experiences within an individual’s social network affect her perceptions of the attractiveness of property investments, and through this channel have large effects on her housing market activity. Our data combine anonymized social network information from Facebook with housing transaction data and a survey. We first show that in the survey, individuals whose geographically-distant friends experienced larger recent house price increases consider local property a more attractive investment, with bigger effects for individuals who regularly discuss such investments with their friends. Based on these findings, we introduce a new methodology to document large effects of housing market expectations on individual housing investment decisions and aggregate housing market outcomes. Our approach exploits plausibly-exogenous variation in the recent house price experiences of individuals’ geographically-distant friends as shifters of those individuals’ local housing market expectations. Individuals whose friends experienced a 5 percentage points larger house price increase over the previous 24 months (i) are 3.1 percentage points more likely to transition from renting to owning over a two-year period, (ii) buy a 1.7 percent larger house, (iii) pay 3.3 percent more for a given house, and (iv) make a 7% larger downpayment. Similarly, when homeowners’ friends experience less positive house price changes, these homeowners are more likely to become renters, and more likely to sell their property at a lower price. We also find that when individuals observe a higher dispersion of house price experiences across their friends, this has a negative effect on their housing investments. Finally, we show that these individual-level responses aggregate up to affect county-level house prices and trading volume. Our findings suggest that the house price experiences of geographically-distant friends might provide a valid instrument for local house price growth.

Defining spatial housing submarkets: Exploring the case for expert delineated boundaries

Although there are numerous reasons for real estate analysts to construct spatial housing submarkets, there is little clarity about how this might best be done in practice. The existing literature offers a variety of techniques including those based on principal components analysis, cluster analysis and a range of other statistical procedures. This paper asks whether, given their market expertise and their role in disseminating information, shaping search patterns and informing bid formation, real estate agents might offer an effective but less data intensive method of submarket construction. The empirical research is based on an experiment that compares the predictive of different sets of submarket boundaries constructed by using either standard statistical methods or through consultation with real estate agents and other market analysts. The analysis draws on housing transactions data from Istanbul, Turkey. While the results do not demonstrate the outright superiority of any single method, they do suggest that expert-defined boundaries tend to perform at least as well as alternative construction techniques. Importantly, the results suggest that agent-based methods for delineating submarket boundaries might be used with a degree of confidence by real estate analysts and planners in market contexts where rich micro-datasets are not readily available. This has been one of the constraints internationally on wider adoption of submarket boundaries as an analytical tool.

Social Networks and Housing Markets

The recent house price experiences within an individual’s social network affect her perceptions of the attractiveness of property investments, and through this channel have large effects on her housing market activity. Our data combine anonymized social network information from Facebook with housing transaction data and a survey. We first show that in the survey, individuals whose geographically-distant friends experienced larger recent house price increases consider local property a more attractive investment, with bigger effects for individuals who regularly discuss such investments with their friends. Based on these findings, we introduce a new methodology to document large effects of housing market expectations on individual housing investment decisions and aggregate housing market outcomes. Our approach exploits plausibly-exogenous variation in the recent house price experiences of individuals’ geographically-distant friends as shifters of those individuals’ local housing market expectations. Individuals whose friends experienced a 5 percentage points larger house price increase over the previous 24 months (i) are 3.1 percentage points more likely to transition from renting to owning over a two-year period, (ii) buy a 1.7 percent larger house, (iii) pay 3.3 percent more for a given house, and (iv) make a 7% larger downpayment. Similarly, when homeowners’ friends experience less positive house price changes, these homeowners are more likely to become renters, and more likely to sell their property at a lower price. We also find that when individuals observe a higher dispersion of house price experiences across their friends, this has a negative effect on their housing investments. Finally, we show that these individual-level responses aggregate up to affect county-level house prices and trading volume. Our findings suggest that the house price experiences of geographically-distant friends might provide a valid instrument for local house price growth.

Who cares about relative status? A quantile approach to consumption of relative house size

ABSTRACTI estimate the willingness to pay (WTP) to live in a house near neighbours with relatively smaller (or larger) houses using housing transaction data. I find that consumers in the 50th and 75th percentile are willing to pay the most for an increase in relative housing consumption while consumers in the lower percentiles and the highest percentile yield a smaller, and statistically insignificant, WTP. This gives evidence to popular media reports that the middle class values relative status the most.

Negative Externalities of Rail Noise and Housing Values: Evidence from the Cessation of Railway Operations in Singapore

The governments of Malaysia and Singapore reached a landmark agreement in May 2010 to end the operations of nearly 80‐year‐old railway lines and stations in Singapore. In our study, the cessation of the railway services operated by Keretapi Tanah Malaya (KTM), a firm owned by the Malaysian government, with effect from July 1, 2011 is used in a quasi‐experiment design to test the effects of the removal of train noise externalities on real estate values. Based on the nonlanded private housing transactions data from January 2005 to June 2013, we find that average prices for houses located within a 400‐m boundary from the railway lines increased by 3.5% relative to prices for houses located outside the 400‐m boundary after the cessation agreement has been announced. The removal of train noise externalities increases housing prices in the affected area by 13.7% on average in the postcessation period of the KTM railway services. Realized economic benefits associated with the railway services cessation were estimated at S$0.36 billion based on houses sold in the post cessation period of the KTM railway services.

The Economics of the Right to Keep a Dog

Dog guardianship has gained popularity in many cities as a result of animal domestication. In spite of its benefits, dog guardianship in high-density urban housing creates certain problems, including increased health risks. Conflicts between different interested parties over the right to keep dogs have therefore surfaced. In Hong Kong, a lawsuit was initiated by a resident in a private housing estate, Mei Foo Sun Chuen, to overturn dog bans imposed by the property management company. The court’s judgment stated that dog bans are enforceable only if dogs are explicitly prohibited in the deed of mutual covenant. This study aims to value empirically the right to keep dogs in private housing based on an analysis of a set of housing transaction data in Hong Kong. It also investigates how the value of the right has changed with the court judgment. The findings suggest that the right was negatively valued by the market, but the court judgment increased its value. These results demonstrate a revealed preference of the Hong Kong community for dog guardianship in a high-rise living environment.

Negative Externality of Rail Noise and Housing Values: Evidence from the Cessation of Railway Operations in Singapore

The governments of Malaysia and Singapore reached a landmark agreement in May 2010 to end the leases for the nearly 80-year-old railway lines and stations in Singapore, which were operated by Keretapi Tanah Malaya (KTM), a firm owned by the Malaysian government, with effect from July 1, 2011. This study uses the cessation of KTM railway services in a quasi-experiment design to test real estate capitalization effects of the removal of train noise externalities. Based on the non-landed housing transactions data in Singapore from January 2005 to June 2013, we find that houses located within 400 meters from the railway lines increased by 3.5% on average relative to houses located outside the 400 meters boundary after the announcement of the agreement. The removal of train noise externalities increases the prices of houses in the affected area by 13.7% on average in the post-cessation of KTM railway services. Realized economic benefits associated with the cessation of the railway services were estimated at S$0.36 billion based on houses sold in the post-KTM period.

Foreign housing investment in Seoul: Origin of investors and location of investment

Foreign housing investment is an outcome of increased mobility in the era of globalisation. The literature has acknowledged the impacts of global migration and capital flows on space. However, an understanding of foreign home ownership is scarce in spite of its growing volume and influence. This study explores who the foreign buyers of housing in Seoul are and where the houses owned by foreigners locate. By analysing housing transaction data and the location of ethnic communities, this paper shows that foreign housing investment in Seoul is closely associated with overseas Koreans rather than any average global talent or immigrant. The location of foreign owned houses is linked to the geography of ethnic clusters as well as areas where high potential investment returns are perceived. Foreign housing investment has the potential to strengthen long-term settlements of foreigners, and to encourage the emergence of “global villages”.

To Sell or Not to Sell: Measuring the Heat of the Housing Market

Combining list‐price, sale‐price and time‐on‐the‐market data, we estimate an index that summarizes housing market conditions and that has a direct economic interpretation. The index measures seller's bargaining power in a structural search model of home seller behavior. Structural estimation uncovers an analytical relationship between reduced form coefficients of hedonic and marketing‐time equations and structural parameters. Thus, the index can be estimated using individual‐level or aggregate data. Using housing transactions data from the Washington, D.C., area, we show that index trends coincide with the up and downturns in home appreciation rates and with popular perceptions about the “heat” of the market.

Measuring the General Equilibrium Benefits of Air Quality Regulation in Small Urban Areas

We propose a horizontal sorting model for evaluating the benefits of air quality regulation in small urban areas. Previous horizontal sorting models of air quality valuation, because they rely on Census public-use microdata, where the geographic unit of a house is defined by an area of 100,000 people, can only be applied to large urban centers such as Los Angeles. This study combines housing transactions data with household characteristics in order to estimate the benefits of meeting the daily national ambient air quality standard for ozone to Las Vegas area homeowners.

Measuring the General Equilibrium Benefits of Air Quality Regulation in Small Urban Areas

We propose a horizontal sorting model for evaluating the benefits of air quality regulation in small urban areas. Previous horizontal sorting models of air quality valuation, because they rely on Census public-use microdata, where the geographic unit of a house is defined by an area of 100,000 people, can be applied only to large urban centers such as Los Angeles. This study combines housing transactions data with household characteristics in order to estimate the benefits of meeting the daily national ambient air quality standard for ozone to Las Vegas area homeowners. <i>(JEL Q51, R21)</i>

Does cleanup of hazardous waste sites raise housing values? Evidence of spatially localized benefits

Economists often rely on publicly available data provided at coarse geographical resolution to value spatially localized amenities. We propose a simple refinement to the hedonic method that accommodates this reality: specifically, we measure localized benefits from the cleanup of hazardous waste sites at the sub-census tract level by examining the entire within-tract housing value distribution, rather than simply focusing on the tract median. Our point estimates indicate that the cleanup leads to larger appreciation in house prices at the lower percentiles of the within-tract house value distribution than at higher percentiles. Though not statistically different from one another, the estimates are monotonically ordered from 24.4% at the 10th percentile, 20.8% at the median and 18.7% at the 90th percentile, respectively. We confirm these results in two ways. First, our analysis using restricted access census block data finds comparable results that cleanup leads to a 14.7% appreciation in the median block-level housing values. Second, our analysis of proprietary housing transactions data show that cheaper houses within a census tract are indeed more likely to be closer to a hazardous waste site, explaining the greater impacts they receive from the cleanup process.

A Rational Expectations Approach to Hedonic Price Regressions with Time-Varying Unobserved Product Attributes: The Price of Pollution

We propose a new strategy for a pervasive problem in the hedonics literature: recovering hedonic prices in the presence of time-varying correlated unobservables. Our approach relies on an assumption about home buyer rationality, under which prior sales prices can be used to control for time-varying unobservable attributes of the house or neighborhood. Using housing transactions data from California's Bay Area between 1990 and 2006, we apply our estimator to recover marginal willingness to pay for reductions in three of the EPA's “criteria” air pollutants. Our findings suggest that ignoring bias from time-varying correlated unobservables considerably understates the benefits of a pollution reduction policy. (JEL D12, D84, Q53, Q58, R21)

Does Cleanup of Hazardous Waste Sites Raise Housing Values? Evidence of Spatially Localized Benefits

Economists often rely on publicly available data provided at coarse geographical resolution to value spatially localized amenities. We propose a simple refinement to the hedonic method that accommodates this reality: specifically, we measure localized benefits from the cleanup of hazardous waste sites at the sub-census tract level by examining the entire within-tract housing value distribution, rather than simply focusing on the tract median. Doing so, we find significantly larger benefits from NPL listing at lower percentiles. We find large effects of construction complete and deletion across the housing value distribution, although these effects are also larger at lower percentiles. We confirm these results with restricted access census block data, and use proprietary housing transactions data to show that cheaper houses within a census tract are indeed more likely to be closer to a hazardous waste site, explaining the greater impacts they receive from the cleanup process.

Spatial and Temporal Dependence in House Price Prediction

This paper incorporates spatial and temporal dependence among housing transactions in predicting future house prices. We employ the spatiotemporal autoregressive model and structure the spatial and temporal weighting matrices as in Pace et al. (1998). We control for the time variation of both the attribute prices and the spatial and temporal dependence parameters through performing the analysis on an annual basis. Spatial heterogeneity is accounted for using experience-based definition of submarkets by real estate professionals. Using a comprehensive housing transaction data set from the Dutch Randstad region, we show that integrating the spatial and temporal dependence within the hedonic modeling improves the prediction power as compared to traditional hedonic model that neglects these effects.

如何构建澳门房地产价格指数

由于澳门房地产市场微小，其价格受外界因素影响变动幅度大，从而增加了银行放贷，政府调控等的困难。本文主要介绍如何构建澳门的房地产价格指数。所采用的方法主要属于特征法，其优点是能够将房屋的隐含价值(如特点)的变动反映到需求和供给的变化上。数据集合来源采用公开的房屋中介“中原地产(澳门)”的房屋交易数据，此数据可以正确和及时地反映澳门房地产交易情况。其次，利用平滑处理(Smoothing)方法(例如，移动平均)来解决由于澳门房屋交易数据库中缺少环境特征所引起的特征法房地产指数同比高频率震荡的问题。该房地产价格指数构建方法也适用于其他类似地区，如香港或中国大陆。 Macao real estate market is small, its price changes by external factors showed high-frequency oscillation, thereby increasing bank lending, government regulation, and other difficulties. This paper describes how to structure the real estate pricing index for Macao SAR. This method was developed, mainly based on the hedonic method for real estate pricing index structuring, the advantage of which is to be able to reflect changes in the implied value of the house price (e.g., characteristics) to changes in demand and supply of real estate in Macao SAR. The data collection sources of public housing intermediary “Centaline (Macau)” housing transaction data, this data is correct and timely manner to reflect the Macaoreal estate transactions. Secondly, the use of smoothing method e.g. moving average to solve the problems of the characteristics of Macao Real Estate Index high frequency due to the lack of environmental characteristics of Macao housing transaction database. Therefore the structuring method is also suitable for other similar cases, such as Hong Kong and MainlandChina.

To Sell or Not to Sell: List Price, Transaction Price and Marketing Time in the Housing Market

This paper specifies and estimates a structural model of home seller behavior. The model is an application of search theory to housing and is estimated using method of moments. The estimation method uncovers an analytical closed-form relationship between reduced- form coefficients of hedonic and marketing time equations and the structural parameters. Estimation can thus be performed using individual level or aggregate data. The model is first estimated using individual housing transaction data from a large suburb of the Washington D.C. metropolitan area during 2006, and it is used to analyze the relationship between list prices and marketing time. Then, for each year in the period 2002-2008, aggregate data are used to compute one structural parameter that measures home sellers' bargaining power. Trends of this estimate coincide with popular perceptions about the heat of the housing market in the area.