Market Structure in the Residential Real Estate Brokerage Market

This study provides empirical evidence regarding brokerage firm concentration in a local market multiple listing service setting over the year 1992-1995. To evaluate the level of brokerage firm concentration in this market, Gini Coefficients, Herfindahl-Hirschman Indices and Concentration Ratios for each year of the study period are calculated. Our results indicate that for firms responsible for listing properties, firm concentration has not varied substantially over the four-year study period. However, for those firms that were responsible for actually selling properties, firm concentration has decreased over the study period. This finding tends to indicate that the MLS now provides greater exposure to a wide variety of sales firms, therefore leading to a higher level of competition with a lower level of concentration for selling firms in this local market.

Real Estate Agent Remarks: Help or Hype?

This article groups the remarks of a multiple listing service listing into common themes and then uses a hedonic pricing model to determine whether such comments are priced in a meaningful way. The comments provide information on the motivation of the seller, location of the property and physical improvements or defects. Most of the comments analyzed are statistically significant. Negative comments are associated with lower sales prices suggesting the helpful nature of comments. Some of the positive comments, however, including "new paint" and "good location" are also associated with lower sales prices suggesting that some comments may be better classified as hype.

Property Assessments and Information Asymmetry in Residential Real Estate

This paper presents a game theoretic model of property tax assessment that allows a tax appraiser to either choose a high or a low assessment. The owner either accepts or challenges this assessment. A ‘‘fixed effects’’ regression model is used to evaluate the differences in the assessed values of a sample of houses from Bexar County, Texas during 2000 and 2001. Where the owner of the house is identified as a state licensed property tax consultant, the assessed value, after adjusting for size, age, and other economic characteristics, ranged from a statistically robust 2.5% to 6.2% lower than neighboring houses.

The Pandemic and its Impacts

The Pandemic has a long history, but the term of “pandemic” is still not been defined by many medical texts. There have been many significant pandemics recorded in human history, and the pandemic related crises have caused enormous negative impacts on health, economies, and even national security in the world. This article will explore the literature for the concept and history of pandemics; summarises the key features of a pandemics, and discusses the negative impacts on health, economy, social and global security of pandemics and disease outbreaks

The Role of Prior Sales Experience of Buyers and Duration in Buyer-Seller Relationships

This paper examines the impact that a buyer’s prior sales experience and the duration of the buyer-salesperson relationship has on the satisfaction and commitment linkages established within the literature. First, two key facets of satisfaction (social and economic) are linked to buyer’s commitment to the salesperson. Next, buyer-salesperson relationship duration is examined as an influencer between the satisfaction and commitment linkages. Following this, the study shifts its focus to examine if and how buyers with prior sales experience view the buyer-salesperson relationship different than buyers without prior sales experience. Findings of the study highlight the importance of developing our understanding of buyer-salesperson relationships with regards to multi-faceted satisfaction, buyer background, and relationship length

Implicit Liquidity Premiums in the Disposition of RTC Assets

The Resolution Trust Corporation (RTC) was created by congressional legislation passed in 1989, and was charged with, among other things, the orderly disposition of other real estate owned (OREO) property. Questions have been raised about how efficient and effective the RTC has been in achieved its congressional mandate. One of the issues resulting from the efficiency question involves the amount of discount the RTC realizes for a quick disposition of the property. This study utilizes data provided by the RTC concerning its sales to analyze the implicit liquidity premium resulting from disposing of OREO. The results of the study indicate what variables contribute to liquidity premiums. This paper's importance relies most heavily on the finding that realistic market adjustments in regulation, over time, helped to achieve a higher degree of liquidity for RTC real estate property sales. The findings of this paper confirm the legislative intent of FIRREA, which is to ensure that real estate properties acquired by the government are disposed of at the highest dollar value possible.

Effect of Foreclosure Status on Residential Selling Price

Real estate professionals believe that foreclosed houses sell at a discount. This article empirically investigates whether foreclosed houses sell at a discount. A sample of 2,482 residential transactions in Arlington, Texas, is used in a hedonic pricing model to test this hypothesis. The results indicate that foreclosed properties sold at a 23% discount.

Searching for keV Sterile Neutrino Dark Matter with X-ray Microcalorimeter Sounding Rockets

High-resolution X-ray spectrometers onboard suborbital sounding rockets can search for dark matter candidates that produce X-ray lines, such as decaying keV-scale sterile neutrinos. Even with exposure times and effective areas far smaller than XMM-Newton and Chandra observations, high-resolution, wide field-of-view observations with sounding rockets have competitive sensitivity to decaying sterile neutrinos. We analyze a subset of the 2011 observation by the X-ray Quantum Calorimeter instrument centered on Galactic coordinates l = 165, b = -5 with an effective exposure of 106 seconds, obtaining a limit on the sterile neutrino mixing angle of sin^2(2 theta) < 7.2e-10 at 95% CL for a 7 keV neutrino. Better sensitivity at the level of sin^2(2 theta) ~ 2.1e-11 at 95\% CL for a 7 keV neutrino is achievable with future 300-second observations of the galactic center by the Micro-X instrument, providing a definitive test of the sterile neutrino interpretation of the reported 3.56 keV excess from galaxy clusters.Comment: 13 pages, 13 figures, submitted to Ap

Preventive measures in infancy to reduce under-five mortality: a case-control study in The Gambia.

OBJECTIVE: To investigate the relationship between child mortality and common preventive interventions: vaccination, trained birthing attendants, tetanus toxoid during pregnancy, breastfeeding and vitamin A supplementation. METHODS: Case-control study in a population under demographic surveillance. Cases (n = 141) were children under five who died. Each was age and sex-matched to five controls (n = 705). Information was gathered by interviewing primary caregivers. RESULTS: All but one of the interventions - whether the mother had received tetanus toxoid during pregnancy - were protective against child mortality after multivariate analysis. Having a trained person assisting at child birth (OR 0.2 95% CI 0.1-0.4), receiving all vaccinations by 9 months of age (OR 0.1; 95% CI 0.01-0.3), being breastfed for more than 12 months (Children breastfed between 13 and 24 months OR 0.1 95% CI 0.03-0.3, more than 25 months OR 0.1 95% CI 0.01-0.5) and receiving vitamin A supplementation at or after 6 months of age (OR 0.05; 95% CI 0.01-0.2) were protective against child death. CONCLUSIONS: This study confirms the value of at least four available interventions in the prevention of under-five death in The Gambia. It is now important to identify those who are not receiving them and why, and to intervene to improve coverage across the population