Vacancies and residential search in an empirical equilibrium search model

As is well known housing has a unique set of characteristics which interact to cause the operation of the housing market to be significantly different from that of other markets. On the demand side individuals have to search for vacancies and its characteristics. Due to the high dimensionality of housing considerable search costs are involved. On the supply side, complicated interactions exist in the housing market whereby frictions occur frequently. In the labour market similar behaviour has been explained with search and matching models, where vacancies and turnovers are explicitly considered. Wheaton (1990) remarks that these search and matching models from the labour market would seem particularly applicable to housing. In this paper we formulate an equilibrium search model of the housing market that deals with search and prices. We beleive that an equilibrium searchmodel could be an important step forward into the analysis of vacancies and residential search. Using this framework we formulate an empirical model for the Dutch housing market.

The price of ignorance:foreclosures, uninformed buyers and house prices

Uninformed buyers may pay more when purchasing complex assets, such as houses. This paper compares local house buyers who are later foreclosed with those not foreclosed for various buyer-types, namely, owner-occupier households, investor-companies, second-home buyers, and small-scale investors. Data from one of the foreclosure epicenters, Orange County, Florida, reveal that subsequent foreclosures are associated with higher prices for comparable housing at the time of purchase. The premium paid by buyers between 2000 and 2007 who experience foreclosure after 2007 is larger closer to the 2007 market peak, approaching 3 percent. We find considerable heterogeneity across buyer-types. In particular, foreclosed second-home buyers and small-scale investors systematically pay more, while investor-companies and owneroccupiers do not. The pattern is consistent with the hypothesis that the premium paid by foreclosed households reflects poor information or limited financial acumen

The external effects of inner-city shopping centers:Evidence from the Netherlands

Shopping center redevelopment is inevitable to remain attractive for consumers. In this paper, we investigate the external effects of shopping center redevelopment on nearby residential property prices. Using a difference-in-difference empirical framework, we find the redevelopment has positive external effects on nearby property prices. We find the price of a property located next to a redeveloped shopping center increases by 1.43% on average just after redevelopment. Our results indicate that these positive external effects wear off rather rapidly across space and over time. This suggests that shopping center redevelopment plays a substantial, but limited, role in combating neighborhood deprivation

Design semantics of connections in a smart home environment

As the environments in which we live become more intelligent— through more computational power, embedded sensors and network connections between the devices that reside in the environment—there is a risk of leaving its users clueless about what is going on. User interaction changes from interaction with a single device into interaction with a larger system— an ecology of things. Physical things are becoming mediators between the physical world and the digital, invisible world that is inside and behind them. The work we present in this article is part of ongoing academic research on using explicit design semantics to convey abstracted models of connections between devices in a smart home environment. This enables users to understand and construct meaningful mental models of the smart environment and interact with it accordingly. We illustrate our findings by presenting a demonstrator that gives users physical control over invisible, wireless connections between devices in a home entertainment scenario

Residential mobility and local housing-market differences

The authors extend previous literature on variations in mobility rates across local housing markets by examining the linkage of mobility rates at the household level to the structure of local housing markets. The results suggest that residential mobility rates differ widely across local housing markets, substantiating the view that residential relocation is intimately intertwined with conditions at the local level. Local housing-market conditions also have different effects on mobility rates for renters and owner-occupiers. The results suggest that variation in residential mobility rates across housing markets can be in part explained by level of urbanization, the tenure structure, the degree of government intervention, and the size of the housing market. Remarkably, these differences in local housing markets cannot be seen to be related to housing-market features only. The results suggest that these differences can also be attributed to the behavior or attitude of households with respect to housing

Ruimte voor de Rivier / Obstakelverwijdering Nederrijn Elst, Gemeente Rhenen: Toetsingsadvies over het milieueffectrapport

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