A Slab in the Face: Building Quality and Neighborhood Effects

The quality of newly constructed single-family houses is usually homogeneous in and heterogeneous between neighborhoods. Such quality-clustering will be caused by the variation of natural amenities throughout a suburban area. Clustering will be enforced if the quality of neighboring buildings increases the value of newly constructed ones. To disentangle the natural amenity eect and the neighborhood eect, we use data from Berlin and exploit that the endogenous eect was weakened during the socialist period. Our results show that the exogenous variation caused by buildings constructed during this period still causes lower quality new buildings in the East of the city.housing supply, housing externality, natural experiment

Renting versus Owning and the Role of Income Risk: The Case of Germany

In a world with complete markets and no transactions cost, the decision whether to rent or buy a home is separate from a household's professional income risk. If markets are incomplete and have frictions, however, profession- specific income risk, regional house price risk, and mobility needs will interact and should affect the tenure mode choice. Using panel data from West Germany, we establish homogeneous profession groups and estimate their regional net income risk and regional mobility. We then examine the impact of the risk and mobility variables on the tenure mode decision at the aggregate and the individual household level. We find that the diversification potential of renting affects the tenure mode choice as do mobility needs.Tenure mode choice, background risk, household mobility

Automated Valuation Services : A case study for Aberdeen in Scotland

Acknowledgements: We are grateful to the three anonymous referees and the editor of the journal for suggestions and comments that helped to improve the paper. We thank seminar participants at the Technische Universit¨at Berlin, Fiona Stoddard, and Verity Watson for helpful comments. The usual disclaimer applies.Peer reviewedPostprin

The Accuracy of Long-term Real Estate Valuations

By using a unique data set of single-family house transactions, we examine the accuracy of the cost and sales comparison approach over different forecast horizons. We find that sales comparison values provide better long-term forecasts than cost values if the economic loss function is symmetric. A weighted average of both sales comparison value and cost value can reduce this loss even further. If the economic loss function is asymmetric, however, cost values might provide better long-term forecasts.prediction accuracy, mortgage underwriting, risk management

Renting versus Owning and the Role of Human Capital : Evidence from Germany

Peer reviewedPostprin

Renting versus Owning and the Role of Income Risk

In a world with complete markets and no transactions cost, the decision whether to rent or buy a home is separate from a household's professional income risk. If markets are incomplete and have frictions, however, profession- specific income risk, regional house price risk, and mobility needs will interact and should affect the tenure mode choice. Using panel data from West Germany, we establish homogeneous profession groups and estimate their regional net income risk and regional mobility. We then examine the impact of the risk and mobility variables on the tenure mode decision at the aggregate and the individual household level. We find that the diversification potential of renting affects the tenure mode choice as do mobility needs

Teleworking and housing demand

Open Access via the Elsevier agreement We are grateful to the two anonymous referees and Gabriel Ahlfeldt (the editor) for their detailed comments and suggestions, which helped to improve the paper. We thank Tim Bolt, Luis Loría, Axel Werwatz and seminar participants at the AREUEA International Conference, the University of Aberdeen and the TU Berlin for helpful comments. We are grateful to the Centre of Real Estate Research and the Health Economics Research Unit of the University of Aberdeen for financial support that made the online survey possible. The usual disclaimer applies. Rainer Schulz: Conceptualisation, Methodology, Software, Validation, Formal analysis, Investigation, Writing. Verity Watson: Conceptualisation, Methodology, Software, Validation, Formal analysis, Investigation, Writing. Martin Wersing: Conceptualisation, Methodology, Software, Validation, Formal analysis, Investigation, Data curation, Writing.Peer reviewedPublisher PD

Real estate listings and their usefulness for hedonic regressions

Acknowledgements: We are grateful to the two anonymous referees and the associate editor for suggestions and comments that helped to improve the paper. We thank Robert Hill, Helmut L¨utkepohl, Bryan MacGregor, Aleksandar Petreski, Verity Watson, and audiences at University of Aberdeen Business School, KTH Royal Institute of Technology Stockholm, and AREUEA 2019 International Conference for helpful comments. The usual disclaimer applies. Kolbe and Werwatz thank the DFG Research Unit 2569: Agricultural Land Markets - Efficiency and Regulation for financial support. Funding: Open Access funding enabled and organized by Projekt DEAL.Peer reviewedPublisher PD

Identifying Berlin’s land value map using adaptive weights smoothing

Acknowledgments We have benefited from comments received at the Applicable Semiparametrics Conferencein Berlin 2013 and from two anonymous referees. Financial support from the Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft, CRC 649 Economic Risk, is gratefully acknowledged. The usual disclaimer appliesPeer reviewedPostprin

The revival of East Berlin’s land market after the German reunification

We are grateful for comments and suggestions by two anonymous referees, Paul Cheshire and Christian Hilber (the guest editors), Jens Kolbe, Euan Phimister, and Verity Watson. We thank Michaela Beeck, Brit Boche, and Gabriele Knopf from the Statistical Office Berlin-Brandenburg for their help with some of the data. The usual disclaimer applies.Peer reviewedPostprin