Editorial

Richard Reed (Faculty of Business and Law, Deakin University, Melbourne, Australia)

International Journal of Housing Markets and Analysis

ISSN: 1753-8270

Article publication date: 5 June 2017

337

Citation

Reed, R. (2017), "Editorial", International Journal of Housing Markets and Analysis, Vol. 10 No. 3, pp. 326-327. https://doi.org/10.1108/IJHMA-03-2017-0031

Publisher

:

Emerald Publishing Limited

Copyright © 2017, Emerald Publishing Limited


Welcome to the third issue in the tenth volume of the International Journal of Housing Markets and Analysis. There has been an observed widespread increase in housing-related research from a global perspective and this is evidenced in the quality of research published in this issue. However, housing very much still remains an under-researched area when considering the proportion of land allocated to housing and also the aggregate wealth in comparison to other property types and asset classes, as well as the substantial research undertaken in these other areas. These seven papers, although all being housing-related, are diverse in the field and each contributes to the growing housing knowledge base.

The first paper from New Zealand investigates the stigma effect on property valuations and sale prices for remediated residential leaky buildings built in the 1990s and 2000s. The findings indicated the level of stigma attached to these buildings, being an average discount of approximately 11 per cent for general market stigma and between 5-10 per cent for post-remediation stigma. Interestingly it was found the stigma would remain for the ensuing 10-15 years after the remediation. The second paper from the USA examines a housing market over two decades, even though the housing market has repeatedly been affected by hurricanes whilst experiencing growth in residential development. Even though coast counties (excluding Alaska) account for only 17 per cent of the entire US land area, approximately 53 per cent of the US population live in these counties. The findings are very insightful and contribute to an understanding why there is a premium paid for these properties and also the higher turnover.

The third paper from Ghana examines the effect of temporal aggregation on house price indices based on four types of temporal aggregation: monthly, quarterly, semi-annual and annual. The data related to 3,250 residential sales, where the findings concluded the type of temporal aggregation was irrelevant when constructing an index. The limitations for this paper may be related to the limited housing data available in this country and also if it is representative of other housing markets. The fourth paper from Dubai investigates two increasing concerns in the house price literature, being nonlinearity and heterogeneity in the relationship between house prices and house attributes. The pooled data related to 140,039 home sales over a 10-year period, where the findings confirmed the double-log quantile regression approach is an overarching description of house price drivers. The results confirm that substantial information can be gained by using nonlinear specification of quantile regression techniques for analysing the relationship between the house prices and attributes.

The fifth paper sought to identify effective housing financing concepts in South Africa to be adopted by the government in achieving its mandate of providing sustainable affordable housing. The outcomes will assist lower-income households to decrease the construction of poor-quality housing, and it also proposed solutions to address the housing deficit. The results suggest misuse of housing subsidies and the illegal sale of houses below market value. Arguably this has led to a continual building of shacks and an increased number of households on the housing waiting list instead of a decrease in the housing deficit. The sixth paper relates to the housing market in Australia with an examination of housing risk and housing return. There were two stages in the analysis, commencing with an estimation of the presence of volatility clustering effects. Then, relation between risk and return in the Australian housing market is examined using a Component Generalized Autoregressive Conditional Heteroscedasticity-in-Mean (C-CARCH-M) model. Overall the results show that there is a strong positive risk–return relationship in all Australian housing markets as one of the main findings.

The final and seventh paper from Sweden investigated the Granger causal link between the stock market index and housing prices with reference to apartment and villa prices. Monthly data between September 2005 and October 2013 relating to apartment prices, villa prices, the stock market index, mortgage rates and the consumer price index were examined. The methodology analysed the long-run co-integration and Granger causal link between the stock market index and apartment and villa prices, where the results indicated the stock market index and housing prices are co-integrated and that a long-run equilibrium relationship exists between them.

These seven countries and their diverse research objectives highlight the synergy between housing researchers in this exciting and rapidly evolving field. All research papers have all passed a rigorous double-blind refereeing process and make a substantial contribution to the existing literature. Please contact the editor directly if I can be of assistance prior to submission and/or discuss the procedure for admission into the review process. If you are interested in submitting a research paper or reviewing potential publications, please contact the editor direct at ijhma@ijhma.com

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