Do online price estimates directly impact sales prices in the real estate market, and if so, how large is that impact? We develop an estimation model that uses the di↵erence between list prices and online price estimates to proxy for house specific unobservables. To account for neighborhood specific unobservables, we use neighborhood first di↵erencing. Using house price estimates, list prices a...

We use a user-cost model to study how dispersed information among housing market participants a¤ects the equilibrium house price. In the model, agents consume housing services, speculate on price changes and are disparately informed about local economic conditions. Information dispersion leads agent to form heterogeneous expectations about housing demand and prices. Optimists, who expect high h...

The effects of land uses on residential property values are crucial when evaluating costs and benefits of land projects for the purpose of public policy prescription or business decision making. It is widely recognized that a nuclear plant or a prison, for example, may often have an adverse effect on the property values of the nearby houses, while a park, a museum or a university usually has a ...

In a recen t study, Peng and Wheaton empirically exam ine the effect of restricti ve land supply on Hong Kong house prices. However, we argue that the impact of the supply of new land by the Hong Kong government is not as important as they maintain in accounting for the volatile house prices in Hong Kong. We show that there is no causal relation ship between land supply and housing prices. Our ...