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This research aims to identify the statistically significant characteristics of a hedonic model to explain the pricing of residential properties in two cities in Pakistan.

The research methodology applies extreme bounds analysis and the least absolute shrinkage and selection operator. Estimators of efficient pricing were measured via stochastic frontier analysis.

The study findings show that the market valuation of residential properties in Islamabad and Rawalpindi is systematically related to numerous factors, including property location, neighborhood characteristics, environmental characteristics, structural characteristics and administrative qualities of local housing societies. The authors also find statistical evidence that suggests that residential estate properties in the two cities are overpriced in the sense that the market transaction prices tend to be higher than the fair prices of the properties in the two cities.

In Pakistan, the term “real estate” is used rather synonymously with the word “investment.” The findings of this research will help investors to identify the measurable factors that affect the transaction prices of residential real estate. These identifications will facilitate the development of strategic plans toward achieving sustainable rates of return in residential real estate markets.

The residential real estate sector in Pakistan is constantly changing. There are myriad causes for these changes, including changes in social structure, cultural attitudes and technology. Customary methods for forecasting market prices for residential properties have been rendered unreliable because of the dynamics of the market. This study will contribute to the understanding of the changing dynamics of residential real estate pricing.

Although Pakistan's residential real estate market is growing very rapidly, there is little published research identifying the drivers of this growth. This study covers these aspects to fill the theoretical gap in a real estate context.

In this chapter, I focus on stigmatization exercised and experienced by local residents, comparing two socially-diverse areas in very different contexts: the Cabrini Green-Near North area in Chicago and the La Loma-La Florida area in Santiago de Chile.

Data for this study were drawn from 1 year of qualitative research, using interviews with residents and institutional actors, field notes from observation sessions of several inter-group spaces, and “spatial inventories” in which I located the traces of the symbolic presence of each group.

Despite contextual differences of type of social differentiation, type of social mix, type of housing tenure for the poor, and public visibility, I argue that there are important common problems: first, symbolic differences are stressed by identity changes; second, distrust against “the other” is spatially crystallized in any type and scale of social housing; third, stigmatization changes in form and scale; and fourth, there are persisting prejudiced depictions and patterns of avoidance.

Socially-mixed neighborhoods, as areas where at least two different social groups live in proximity, offer an interesting context for observing territorial stigmatization. They are strange creatures of urban development, due to the powerful symbolism of desegregation in contexts of growing inequalities.

The chapter contributes to a cross-national perspective with a comparison of global-north and global-south cities. And it also springs from a study of socially-mixed areas, in which the debate on concentrated/deconcentrated poverty is central, and in which the problem of “clearing places” appears in both material (e.g., displacement) and symbolic (e.g., stigmatization) terms.

The purpose of this paper is to empirically compare the impact of firm reputation on consumers' evaluation of e‐tailers' market response outcomes (satisfaction, trust, and loyalty) in two cultures, the USA (individualism, low uncertainty avoidance, low context, and high‐trust society) and South Korea (collectivism, high uncertainty, high context, and low‐trust society).

Two sets of data were collected, one in the USA and the other in Korea, using a mall intercept method. Males and females over 18 who had online purchase experience were chosen as respondents.

The results with 385 usable questionnaires (182 from the USA and 203 from Korea) revealed that firm reputation contributes to customer loyalty by increasing customer satisfaction, and this effect is stronger in Korea than in the USA. However, contrary to the expectations, no cultural differences were found in reputation‐trust and trust‐loyalty links. That is, firm reputation leads to customer loyalty through trust in both cultures and the impacts are the same across cultures.

Further validation of the findings with other cultural settings merits attention.

The firm reputation‐satisfaction‐loyalty link is stronger in Korea than in the USA. While it may be premature to conclude the link is stronger in all Asian markets, international managers should carefully consider this finding when establishing operations in Asian markets.

This study is one of the first systematic cross‐cultural examinations of how firm reputation functions in an e‐tailing context increase market response outcomes.

It was not until the late 1960s that housing attracted much attention from academic social scientists. Since that time the literature has expanded widely and diversified, establishing housing with a specialised status in economics, sociology, politics, and in related subjects. As we would expect, the new literature covers a technical, statistical, theoretical, ideological, and historical range. Housing studies have not been conceived and interpreted in a monolithic way, with generally accepted concepts and principles, or with uniformly fixed and precise methodological approaches. Instead, some studies have been derived selectively from diverse bases in conventional theories in economics or sociology, or politics. Others have their origins in less conventional social theory, including neo‐Marxist theory which has had a wider intellectual following in the modern democracies since the mid‐1970s. With all this diversity, and in a context where ideological positions compete, housing studies have consequently left in their wake some significant controversies and some gaps in evaluative perspective. In short, the new housing intellectuals have written from personal commitments to particular cognitive, theoretical, ideological, and national positions and experiences. This present piece of writing takes up the two main themes which have emerged in the recent literature. These themes are first, questions relating to building and developing housing theory, and, second, the issue of how we are to conceptualise housing and relate it to policy studies. We shall be arguing that the two themes are closely related: in order to create a useful housing theory we must have awareness and understanding of housing practice and the nature of housing.

The purpose of this paper is to investigate how the pandemic affects tenants’ response to their lease obligations. This paper commences with examining the adopted tenant selection criteria during the COVID-19 pandemic. Then, this paper statistically tests if there is a relationship between selection criteria and response on whether the pandemic has effects or not. Then, this paper investigates the specific areas of impact on tenants’ ability to adequately keep to lease agreements in the Nigerian rental market. Finally, this paper proceeds to confirm if there is a relationship between selection criteria and the aspects of tenants’ deficiencies in rental obligations because of COVID-19.

Survey data, backed with interviews, is elicited from practicing estate surveyors and valuers and licensed property managers in Lagos, the largest property market in Nigeria and sub-Sahara Africa. Policy solutions and implications were solicited from personnel at the ministry of housing and senior professionals in the property sector. Data were analyzed using descriptive statistics, factor analysis and computer-aided qualitative data analysis, Atlas.ti.

Tenant’s health status is now accorded a priority together with others. Numbers of tenants are challenged with keeping to the prompt-rent-payment rule. Other areas of slight breaches included livestock rearing, subletting, alteration and repair covenants. Except for tenant reputation and tenant family size, there was no significant relationship between tenant’s health status consideration and the COVID-19 effect on tenant non-compliance with lease obligation. Tenants’ non-compliance with tenancy obligations has a connection with the tenants’ affordability, reputation, ability to sign an undertaking and health conditions during the pandemic. This paper recommends rental housing policy review.

It is recommended that the rental policy should be reviewed to give room for rental allowance or palliatives, private rental market regulation, exploration of the national housing fund and, if possible, social housing adoption policy in Nigeria.

This paper draws policymakers’ attention to the need to prepare for the future safety net that caters to citizenry welfare in challenging times.

My research, entitled ‘The negotiation of belonging among long‐term West Indian migrants residing in a sheltered housing scheme in Brixton, London’, examined the intricacies of identity and placement. The Supporting People Framework governs this BME supported housing scheme within the Council's equalities ethos. My research sample of 26 women and men aged between 60 and 86 were working‐class migrants who had moved to England in the 1950s and 1960s. Influenced by Gramsci's (1990) ideas about the involvement of ordinary people in social change, and Bhabha's (1994) idea of placement, I investigated how the elders, assisted by others who acted on their behalf, negotiated their place in British society as recipients of support services, and engaged in consultation and user involvement processes. Both conflicting and supportive service provision arose. This created shifting boundaries in relation to belonging that emerged between the elders, their place of birth, their formative culture and their on‐going engagement with new experiences, other groups and the state.

Between 2006 and 2012, Mexico implemented a “frontal war against organized crime”. This strategy increased criminal violence and triggered negative consequences across the country’s economic, political and social spheres. This study aims to analyse how the magnitude and visibility of criminal violence impact the housing market of Mexico City.

The authors used different violent proxies to measure the effect of the magnitude and visibility of violence in housing prices. The structure of the data set is an unbalanced panel with no conditions of strict exogeneity. To address endogeneity, the authors calculate the first differences to estimate an Arellano–Bond estimator and use the lags of the dependent variable to instrumentalise the endogenous variable.

Results suggest that the magnitude of violence negatively impacts housing prices. Similarly, housing prices are negatively affected the closer the property is to visible violence, measured through narcomessages placed next to the bodies of executed victims. Lastly, housing prices are not always affected when a violent event occurs nearby, specifically, when neighbours or potential buyers consider this event as sporadic violence.

There are only a few studies of violence in housing prices using data from developing countries, and most of these studies are conducted with aggregated data at the municipality or state level. The authors are using geocoded information, both violence events and housing prices, to estimate more disaggregated effects. Moreover, the authors used different proxies to measure different characteristics of violence (magnitude and visibility) to estimate the heterogeneous effects of violence on housing prices.

This book is a policy proposal aimed at the democratic left. It is concerned with gradual but radical reform of the socio‐economic system. An integrated policy of industrial and economic democracy, which centres around the establishment of a new sector of employee‐controlled enterprises, is presented. The proposal would retain the mix‐ed economy, but transform it into a much better “mixture”, with increased employee‐power in all sectors. While there is much of enduring value in our liberal western way of life, gross inequalities of wealth and power persist in our society.

This paper aims to integrate the concept of corporate social responsibility (CSR) within the South African quantity surveying firms (SAQSF) as an approach for solving the housing problem for the poor.

A research methodology consisted of a literature review and field study designed to accomplish four objectives. Firstly, the literature review studied the housing problem in South Africa, the quantity surveying profession and the CSR concept. Secondly, the field study investigated the perception and application of the CSR concept by SAQSF. Thirdly, an innovative business improvement framework integrating the concept of CSR within SAQSF is developed. Finally, research conclusions and recommendations are summarised.

There is a severe housing problem for the poor in South Africa. Government initiatives for delivering housing for the poor have to be supported by quantity surveyors through utilising their practical knowledge and expertise in social context. SAQSF are aware of the CSR and welcome the developed framework. The CSRF is recommended to be used as an innovative tool to assist in alleviating the housing problem for the poor.

This research focused only on the quantity surveying firms in South Africa.

This research presents a practical solution to the housing problem for the poor through activating the social role of SAQSF towards supporting government initiatives.

This paper presents an innovative business improvement framework integrating the CSR concept into SAQSF towards solving the housing problem for the poor. This ideology has received scant attention in construction literature. The developed framework represents a synthesis that is novel and creative in thought and adds value to the knowledge in a manner that has not previously occurred.