Regulatory zoning and coastal housing prices: a bayesian hedonic approach (In French)

The priority for France’s “Grenelle II” environmental legislation is to reduce the consumption of space caused by urbanisation. The best tool for achieving this goal is zoning within a territorial planning framework. Yet zoning also tends to increase property values, due to the scarcity effects it provokes (restricting the supply of land) as well as its amenity effects (the capitalisation of land use externalities in housing pricing).\r\nThe present article studies the impact on property prices of the distance to regulated zones located on Arcachon Bay near Bordeaux in Southwest France – a region that is particularly conducive to this kind of analysis because it combines exceptional landscape quality and strong urban pressures. We have estimated a hedonic model corrected for spatial self-correlation. Heteroscedasticity is corrected using Bayesian simulation methods, as suggested by Le Sage and Parent (2006).\r\nThe findings reveal tension between urban and natural amenities in the determination of property prices. Proximity to facilities and coastal amenities increase prices. The impact on housing prices of zoning materialising through Land Use Plans (LUP) is corroborated. Protected natural zones tend to raise prices as long as long they are not used for agricultural or forestry activities. Conversely, proximity to zones of future urbanisation tends to lower housing prices.LUP zoning, Hedonic price method, Bayesian spatial econometrics, Coastal

Real Estate and Land Values on the shoreline: a transaction-level analysis (In French)

Land use changes generate some conflicts, in particular between agricultural and residential uses in the urbanization context and sprawl phenomena. Coastal zones also produce specific amenities that create conflicts over land-use, increase housing and land values and, associated with and/or substituted to urban amenities modify the structure of the territory.\r\nThis article is aimed at studying the influence of coastal and urban amenities, respectively defined in terms of accessibility to the sea side and to employment center, on prices. We differentiate the analysis between two distinct study areas according to the degree of urban development: the Charente coast that is still highly agricultural, and the Basque coastal area more urbanized. According to these local specificities, we will study with the same hedonic pricing method land use prices in the first case and property prices in the second.\r\nThe main results underline the major influence of littoralisation as structural phenomena in housing and land prices dynamics. We identify two different types of gradient of values in relation to distance to sea side as regards to the residential or agricultural use: a “growth premium” explains the agricultural land price gradient whereas both amenity and accessibility premiums justify the residential gradients.coastal areas, land and housing markets, hedonic pricing, gradients