Hedonic Prices on Vienna ́s Urban Residential Land Markets

This paper analyses hedonic pricing factors in the urban residential land market of Vienna. Considerable impacts of the underground network are to be found on residential land values. The accessibility of open space and shopping opportunities are among the major pricing factors of residential land markets. The socio-economic characteristics of the neighbourhood are also important. The connection between these characteristics and land price levels is, however, to some extent influenced by social housing and land politics in Vienna. Furthermore, analysis of submarkets shows that road-noise is the one characteristic which most distinguishes single family home owners from others. Disequilibria in housing markets seem to be of less importance for hedonic prices than underlying changes in the attributes of land parcels. An example is aircraft noise pollution, the hedonic price of which has risen considerably because of the rather strong increase in transport volume in the last decade. Finally, we find that announcements of new subway stations have positive effects on land values in newly developing areas but not so in already developed areas where redevelopment is prohibitive costly.