Identification of Geographical Segmentation of the Rental Apartment Market in the Tokyo Metropolitan Area (Short Paper)

It is often said that the real estate market is divided geographically in such a manner that the value of attributes of real estate properties is different for each area. This study proposes a new approach to the investigation of the geographical segmentation of the real estate market. We develop a price model with many regional explanatory variables, and implement the generalized fused lasso - a regression method for promoting sparsity - to extract the areas where the valuation standard is the same. The proposed method is applied to rental data of apartments in the Tokyo metropolitan area, and we find that the geographical segmentation displays hierarchal patterns. Specifically, we observe that the market is divided by wards, railway lines and stations, and neighbourhoods

THE URBAN HOUSING MARKET IN A TRANSITIONAL ECONOMY: SHANGHAI AS A CASE STUDY

Thesis (PhD) - Indiana University, Geography, 2006The urban housing market has been an important research topic for urban geographers and urban economists. After 1990 when former communist regimes were transformed from planned to market-oriented economies and globalization accelerated, the urban housing markets of the transitional nations attracted increasing attention from academia. Most of these studies addressed housing market structure, housing price and residential location. Similarly, this research examines housing market structure and housing price in the newly established housing market in Shanghai. This research begins with an exploration of market structure and market players and the interactions between them. Market structure sets the framework within which market players' maximize their market related interests. China's reform and its integration into the world economy have brought many players into its urban housing market. These players not only have unique interests in the market but also share common interests to some extent. Players include international institutions, private companies, and traditional forces, such as the government and work units. It is necessary to understand market structure and players and how they interact because this knowledge is fundamental for any further investigation of the market. Moreover, the analysis of market structure and market players adds texture to the following empirical analysis. Housing price is another focus of this research. The determinants of housing price and the geographical distribution of housing price are the main research topics of housing price studies. Previous literature has documented the effects of houses' structural and locational characteristics on housing price. However, they rarely pay attention to the influences of 'macro factors' (such as FDI, economic transition (ET) and urban transformation (UT)) on housing price, although these factors do play crucial roles. Using hedonic modeling techniques, this research conducts quantitative analyses of the impacts of 'macro factors' on housing price. The hedonic models are fitted for both the whole housing market and individual submarkets. Since the modeling results may be affected by definition of submarkets and there are many methods to delimit the submarkets, this research also explores an appropriate method of market segregation for Shanghai's housing market

The Spatial Dimension of House Prices

The economic reform in China, launched in the late 1970s, gradually promotes the free mobility of capital and labour between rural and urban areas, and between cities. The following housing market reform in the late 1990s thoroughly terminates the socialist allocation of housing and introduces market forces into the housing sector. Such institutional shifts have profound effects on the evolution of the Chinese interurban housing market. Yet, little is known about the spatial behaviour of house prices across cities in the post-reform era. How do the housing markets of different cities organise across space? What is the relationship between the house price dynamics of different cities? To answer these questions, this research performs economic and econometric analysis of the spatial dimension of the Chinese interurban housing market. In addition, this research also concerns the construction of a reliable house price index in the presence of spatial heterogeneity and dependence in the urban housing market of China. A reliable house price index is essential to the analysis of house price dynamic behaviour. However, owing to the data problem, this part is conducted based on the housing market of a Dutch city. This research discovers the spatial regularities of house prices across Chinese prefecture cities in an economic common area and investigates the underlying formation process. It reveals an uneven distribution of house prices across cities, with those large and/or higher-tier cities and their neighbours having significantly higher house prices. Such an uneven pattern of house prices demonstrates the agglomeration spillovers in the interurban housing market. Two forms of spillovers are empirically examined. The first is the urban hierarchy distance effect, which is related to the position of a city in a hierarchical urban system. In general, the distance penalty of higher-tier urban centres is confirmed, that is, all else being equal, the further away a city is from the higher-tier city, the lower the house price. The second form of spillovers relates to a city’s position in a city network system, in which no hierarchical structure is imposed. In such a situation, the spillovers arise from the interaction with neighbouring cities and it is found that a city that has larger neighbours tends to have higher house prices. These two forms of spillovers are somewhat correlated with each other because a higher-tier city is always associated with a larger urban size. It is argued that the spillovers in the interurban housing market work through two channels: the productivity and amenity channel. First, because of the economies of agglomeration, a location that has good access to large urban concentrations is likely to enjoy some productivity advantages and thus can bear higher house prices. Second, a location that is surrounded by large urban concentrations can easily get access to some unique amenities that need a large market potential to survive; households value such access and thus bid up the house price there. However, it seems that the role that the productivity channel plays is much more important than the role of the amenity channel. In addition to the static distribution of house prices across space, this research also concerns the time series behaviour of house price dynamics across Chinese cities. Geography plays an important role in explaining the cross-city differences of house price dynamics. For the housing markets of major cities across the whole of China, the cluster analysis generally uncovers two relatively homogeneous groups, within which the house price growth series share a similar dynamic pattern. One cluster contains mainly the cities in the undeveloped central, western and northeast China, whereas the other is composed of the most important economic centres in eastern China. However, the spatial segregation of housing markets is more likely to occur in the most recent period. In the early period before 2010, the house price dynamics of cities are much more homogeneous. The similarities and/or dissimilarities among house price dynamics of different cities indicate the complicated interrelationships between each of the markets. This research further examines various spatial interrelationships between the housing markets of an economic common area in south China. The spatial causal relationships between housing markets are first tested by the Granger causality test. The results reveal a complicated pattern, but it can be tentatively confirmed that house price changes in the developed eastern-central markets ‘cause’ the house price dynamics in the less-developed western markets. Then a spatial-temporal model is built to depict the diffusion pattern of house prices between markets. In general, a shock given to the house price of a certain market gradually spreads to its neighbouring cities. However, the interurban housing market can hardly remain an equilibrium relationship in the long-run, that is, it tends to be divergent. The last part of this research concerns the treatment of spatial effects in the hedonic house price model as well as its influence on the construction of hedonic imputation indexes, which measure the pure house price changes over time. It is argued that the value of a dwelling can be split into the value of the land and the value of the structure, and that the value of the location characteristics of a dwelling is capitalised into the price of the land. Thus, land prices can be expected to vary significantly across space. Indeed, the mixed geographically weighted regression framework adopted in this research, which allows the shadow price of structure to be constant across space and the implicit price of land to be property-based, is found to be superior to, in terms of model prediction, those models that restrict the spatial variation of land prices. Nevertheless, the Fisher imputation house price index based on the most sophisticated model is almost identical to those based on the simple specifications. The land and structure price indexes, on the other hand, are sensitive to the treatment of location in land prices. This research underlines market forces in the operation of Chinese interurban housing markets in the post-reform era, and contributes to the understanding of spatial dimension of house prices, not only in China, but also in other market-oriented economies

Personnel transfers and the geographical mobility of population: The case of Japan.

Personnel transfers within the internal labour markets of large multilocational organizations are shown to be the largest single cause of interregional population migration in contemporary Japan. The challenges which such transfers present to conventional migration theory are examined in the context of Japanese personnel management practices, especially the so-called "lifetime employment system". A typology of transfers under this system is developed, and a typical pattern of career mobility described. The incidence of personnel transfers is examined in respect of industry, company size and the personal characteristics of transferees, and the locus of real decision-making power is explored. The temporal and spatial characteristics of interregional transfers are described in detail. Two case studies illustrate the incidence of transfers in stable organizations and in industries undergoing structural transformation. The first case study, of the Ministry of Labour, reveals intricate relationships between geographical mobility and the career paths of senior government officials, while the second, which examines personnel transfers within the Nippon Steel Corporation, shows how transfers are incorporated within broader policies for structural adjustment. The housing needs of transferees are often met directly by the employer through the provision of company housing, a distinctive feature of the Japanese case, as is the prevalence of "partial migration", in which the primary migrant (the transferee) leaves his/her family behind for the duration of a posting. These aspects of the Japanese transfer system are examined in detail, before a concluding chapter sets the agenda for future research

Housing affordability and housing submarkets : the case of Greater Sydney

To date, the existing body of literature on housing affordability and house price behaviour focused largely on international, national, state and city-based levels. Specifically, metropolitan city-based studies are done at aggregate levels despite the enormous empirical evidence pointing out the existing socio-economic and demographic discrepancies in these cities. In Greater Sydney, for example, studies such as Baum (2004), Costello (2009), Forster (2006), and Randolph and Tice (2014), have reported these socio-economic divergences within the city. These socio-economic discrepancies are also evident in other capital cities of Australia (Hulse et al. 2014). Specifically, they found that there is stronger concentration of social and spatial disadvantages in Sydney, Melbourne and Brisbane. Recognising these differences, the study adopted a sub-city empirical analysis of housing affordability and house price behaviour within Greater Sydney. The aim of this research is to enhance our understanding of housing affordability and house price dynamics in Greater Sydney from a disaggregated perspective. These methods and findings could also be possibly adopted in other capital cities of Australia. This research has filled an important gap in the housing literature in general and regional housing analysis in particular. The study has revealed the varying rates at which entry-level affordability is declining across the regions of Greater Sydney. The study found that the increasing number of property investment in the relative low-income regions of the city (western, inner-west and southern regions) could be a causative agent of the significant decline in entry-level affordability of these regions. Further, some households use low-income regions to get their feet in the property market and then move to the higher-end of the market as their equity improves. This trade-up housing strategy, combined with the growing property investment activities in the relative low-income regions of Greater Sydney, is contributing to the deterioration of entry-level affordability in these regions of the city. Policy makers could consider the findings of this study in formulating a more targeted and regionally-balanced housing policy

Reports to the President

A compilation of annual reports for the 1999-2000 academic year, including a report from the President of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, as well as reports from the academic and administrative units of the Institute. The reports outline the year's goals, accomplishments, honors and awards, and future plans

Property Markets and Land Policies in Northeast Asia The Case of Five Cities : Tokyo, Seoul, Shanghai, Taipei and Hong Kong

This book examines the public policies implemented in five North-Asian countries/regions to address the dropp of land prices after the 1997 Asian crisis. It displays a substantial variety of strategies across Northeast Asia, resulting from a complex set of colonial legacies (Japanese legacy in Taiwan and South-Korea, British legacy in Hong Kong), and regional or national specific ways of addressing land issues (emphasis on Henry Georges' theory in Taiwan, emerging land markets in Mainland China).aménagement, bulle, politique foncière, immobilier, Asie

Urban green space: stakeholders’ and visitors’ perception in Kuala Lumpur Malaysia

Planning, development and maintenance of urban green space is among the key elements of sustainable urban development. Acknowledging and participating in the conservation and enhancement of the urban green space can improve the environment and provide huge benefits to city dwellers. The aim of this paper is to investigate the stakeholders’ and visitors’ understanding of their responsibility and responsiveness towards urban green spaces in Kuala Lumpur. Stakeholders and people understanding and responsibilities were investigated using interview method. Visitors to various urban parks in Kuala Lumpur and representatives of the National Landscape Department (JLN) and the City Hall of Kuala Lumpur (CHKL) were interviewed to capture the view of stakeholders and visitors. The study found that most visitors are concerned with the quality of the physical development and social necessities as their preferences for ‘sustainable city’. The survey also indicates that the government should initiate enhancement of urban green space and promote awareness of conservation through gazettes and information campaign to preserve urban green space. Thus, stakeholders such as NGOs, developers, professionals should play their role in realizing the visions of local authorities and the nation. Research demonstrated that there is need to have high awareness towards environmental attitude which could be enhanced to encourage preservation and conservation of nature and their associated benefits. Key words: Urban planning, Urban green space, Urban environment, Social benefits