Rental Amenities and the Stability of Hedonic Prices: A Comparative Analysis of Five Market Segments

The current paper applies the hedonic approach to five rental submarkets in the Quebec region, namely Quebec City, Vanier, Ste-Foy, Beauport and Charlesbourg. The databank consists of information obtained from property owners via a yearly survey; some 32,000 rental units and nearly 3,300 buildings are included in the study. Data provide detailed information on building and apartment size, age, location, services provided, quality of premises and type of occupants; vacancy rates can also be derived from the bank. In addition, resorting to a regional geographic information system permits integration of neighborhood effects into the analysis. Findings suggest that significant differences in implicit prices do exist across market segments. However, while consistent results are obtained for major rent determinants, collinearity clearly emerges with respect to some rental attributes. Using a regression-based paired comparison approach, it is possible to identify stable hedonic prices for main rental services; the coefficients thus obtained are then forced back as constraints into the service-adjusted model, thereby improving its overall consistency and practicability.

Retail Concentration and Shopping Center Rents - A Comparison of Two Cities

This study aims primarily at testing whether, and to what extent, retail concentration within regional and super-regional shopping centers affects rent levels as well as the differential impact it may exert for various goods categories and sub-categories and in different urban contexts. In this paper, 1,499 leases distributed among eleven regional and super-regional shopping centers in Montreal and Quebec City, Canada, and negotiated over the 2000-2003 period are being considered. Unit base rents (base rent per sq. ft.) are regressed on a series of descriptors that include percentage rent rate, retail unit size (GLA), lease duration, shopping center age as well as 31 retail categories while the Herfindahl index is used as a measure of intra-category retail concentration. Findings suggest that while, overall, intra-category retail concentration affects base rent negatively, the magnitude and, eventually, direction of the impact varies depending on the nature of the activity and the market dynamics that prevail for the category considered.

Testing the Temporal Stability of Accessibility Value in Residential Hedonic Prices

Purpose – This paper bridges the gap between, on the one hand, supply-driven (urban form and transportation networks) and demand-driven (action-based) accessibility to urban amenities and, on the other hand, house price dynamics as captured through panel hedonic modelling. It aims at assessing temporal changes in the valuation of accessibility, while ordering households’ priorities among access to labour market, schools and shopping outlets. Design/methodology/approach – Several indexes are built using a methodology developed by Thériault et al. (2005, published in Journal of Property Investment and Finance). They integrate car-based travel time on the road network (using GIS), distribution of opportunities (activity places) within the city, and willingness of persons to travel in order to reach specific types of activity places (mobility behaviour). While some measure centrality (potential attractiveness considering travel time, population and opportunities) others consist of action-based indexes using fuzzy logic and capture the willingness to travel in order to reach actual specific activity places (work places, schools, shopping centres, groceries). They summarise suitable opportunities available from each neighbourhood. Rescaled indices (worst - to 100 - best) are inserted simultaneously into a multiplicative hedonic model of single-family houses sold in Quebec City during years 1986, 1991 and 1996 (10,269 transactions). Manipulations of accessibility indexes are developed for ordering their relative impact on sale prices and isolate effects of each index on the variation of sale price, thus providing proxies of households’ priorities. Moreover, a panel-like modelling approach is used to control for changes in the valuation of each property-specific, taxation or accessibility attribute during the study period. Findings – This original approach proves efficient in isolating the cross-effects of urban centrality from accessibility to several types of amenities, while controlling for multicollinearity and heteroscedasticity. Results are in line with expectations. While only a few property-specific attributes experience a change in their marginal contribution to house value during the study period, all accessibility indexes do. Every single accessibility index has a much stronger effect on house values than centrality (which is still marginally significant). When buying their home, households put more emphasis on access to schools than they put on access to the labour market, which in turn, prevail over accessibility to either shopping centres or, finally, groceries. The ordering is rather stable but the actual valuation of a specific amenity may change over time. Practical implications – Better understanding the effect of accessibility to amenities on house values provides guidelines for choosing among a set of new neighbourhoods to develop in order to generate optimal fiscal effects for municipalities. It could also provide guidelines for decision making when improving transportation networks or locating new activity centres.

Les conflits urbains : une approche analytique

Cette note de recherche aborde premièrement quelques questions de base concernant les conflits urbains. Qu’est ce qu’un conflit urbain? Quels rôles les conflits jouent-ils dans les transformations des milieux de vie? Comment ces conflits en sont-ils venus à occuper le devant de la scène au cours des dernières décennies? Le texte illustre ensuite une approche analytique susceptible de compléter les études de cas qui constituent la démarche habituelle dans la recherche sur les conflits. Cette démarche utilise la presse écrite comme principale source de données et la modélisation statistique comme principale méthode d’analyse.This research note begins by examining some basic questions relating to urban conflicts. What is an urban conflict? What are the roles played by conflicts in the transformation of urban environments? How have such conflicts gained so much prominence in recent decades? The note then proposes an analytical approach capable of expanding case studies, which are the standard method used in research on conflicts. In this approach, newspapers are selected as the primary data source and the method of analysis relies heavily on statistical modelling

Association between Activity Space Exposure to Food Establishments and Individual Risk of Overweight

Objective: Environmental exposure to food sources may underpin area level differences in individual risk for overweight. Place of residence is generally used to assess neighbourhood exposure. Yet, because people are mobile, multiple exposures should be accounted for to assess the relation between food environments and overweight. Unfortunately, mobility data is often missing from health surveys. We hereby test the feasibility of linking travel survey data with food listings to derive food store exposure predictors of overweight among health survey participants. Methods: Food environment exposure measures accounting for non-residential activity places (activity spaces) were computed and modelled in Montreal and Quebec City, Canada, using travel surveys and food store listings. Models were then used to predict activity space food exposures for 5,578 participants of the Canadian Community Health Survey. These food exposure estimates, accounting for daily mobility, were used to model self-reported overweight in a multilevel framework. Median Odd Ratios were used to assess the proportion of between-neighborhood variance explained by such food exposure predictors. Results: Estimates of food environment exposure accounting for both residential and non-residential destinations were significantly and more strongly associated with overweight than residential-only measures of exposure for men. For women, residential exposures were more strongly associated with overweight than non-residential exposures. In Montreal, adjusted models showed men in the highest quartile of exposure to food stores were at lesser risk of being overweight considering exposure to restaurants (OR = 0.36 [0.21–0.62]), fast food outlets (0.48 [0.30–0.79]), or corner stores (0.52 [0.35–0.78]). Conversely, men experiencing the highest proportion of restaurants being fast-food outlets were at higher risk of being overweight (2.07 [1.25–3.42]). Women experiencing higher residential exposures were at lower risk of overweight. Conclusion: Using residential neighbourhood food exposure measures may underestimate true exposure and observed associations. Using mobility data offers potential for deriving activity space exposure estimates in epidemiological models

Tumor markers in breast cancer - European Group on Tumor Markers recommendations

Recommendations are presented for the routine clinical use of serum and tissue-based markers in the diagnosis and management of patients with breast cancer. Their low sensitivity and specificity preclude the use of serum markers such as the MUC-1 mucin glycoproteins ( CA 15.3, BR 27.29) and carcinoembryonic antigen in the diagnosis of early breast cancer. However, serial measurement of these markers can result in the early detection of recurrent disease as well as indicate the efficacy of therapy. Of the tissue-based markers, measurement of estrogen and progesterone receptors is mandatory in the selection of patients for treatment with hormone therapy, while HER-2 is essential in selecting patients with advanced breast cancer for treatment with Herceptin ( trastuzumab). Urokinase plasminogen activator and plasminogen activator inhibitor 1 are recently validated prognostic markers for lymph node-negative breast cancer patients and thus may be of value in selecting node-negative patients that do not require adjuvant chemotherapy. Copyright (C) 2005 S. Karger AG, Basel