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The paper aims to describe, construct, and compare alternative price indices for real estate in Malta over the period 1980‐2010.

The paper utilises the technique of hedonic regression analysis to construct four hedonic price indices. One of the constructed indices is based the unconstrained hedonic methodology. Two other indices are variants of the constrained hedonic technique, while the fourth consists of an imputed hedonic index. The hedonic indices are then compared to other 12 conventional indices, namely the Laspeyres, Paasche and Fisher indices (constant weight and chain linked) that are constructed by utilizing the mean and median house prices pertaining to 14 different types of houses.

All indices are found to move closely together, growing between six and seven times between 1980 and 2010. The average annual compound growth rate of the 16 indices was found to be 6.5126 percent. The paper also shows how the estimated hedonic coefficients can be used to construct regional price indices for different combinations of housing characteristics.

The paper builds on previous work related to house prices in Malta. Its main contribution is the construction of hedonic indices that are based on advertised prices that span over a relatively long period of 31 years, together with the construction of constant weight and chain linked Laspeyres, Paasche and Fisher indices.

The purpose of this paper is to test the accuracy of the explicit time variable (ETV) and the strictly cross-sectional (SCS) hedonic models when constructing house price indices in developing markets using Ghana as a case study.

The quantitative research methodology is adopted where the accuracy of the two hedonic models used in the construction of house price indices is examined using the mean squared error (MSE) and out-of-sample technique. Yearly indices are constructed for each of the models using 60 per cent of the sample data and 40 per cent is used to forecast house prices for each observations based on which the MSEs are calculated.

The two models produce similar house price trend but the SCS model is more volatile. The ETV model produces the lower MSE, suggesting that it is better to pool data together and includes time dummies (ETV) to estimate indices rather than running separate regressions (SCS) to estimate the index. Using the Morgan–Granger–Newbold test, it is found that indeed the difference between the forecast errors of the two models are statistically significant on a 1 per cent level confirming the accuracy of the ETV model over the SCS model.

This paper has produced convincing results recommending the use of the ETV hedonic model to construct house price indices which is of use to practitioners and academics.

The introduction of financial products like the property derivatives and home equity insurances to the financial market calls for accurate and robust property price indices and the hedonic method is mostly used to construct these indices. While there have been a lot of test conducted as to which variant of the hedonic method to use in developed markets, little is known about the developing markets. This paper contributes to fill these gaps.

The aim of this paper is to present estimation results of hedonic price models as well as housing price indices for the Warsaw secondary market.

Three direct methods of constructing a hedonic price index and four indices that allow for quality adjustment are presented. The paper also discusses theoretical issues related to the estimation and interpretation of hedonic models.

It is shown that the imputation and the time dummy variable indices are subject to less variation than the characteristic price index. It is also shown that in comparison to the mean and the median, hedonic indices are less variable, which can be interpreted as partial control for quality changes in dwellings sold.

As this research project represents one of the first attempts of hedonic modelling applied to the Polish housing market, its results may be employed by appraisers to gain insight into behaviour of the Warsaw housing market. Practical implications focus on reliable measurement of house price dynamics in Poland. This paper supplies an appropriate methodology for addressing this question and offers empirical solutions.

Employment of hedonic models for construction of quality‐adjusted housing price indices has not yet been explored in Poland. The theoretical and practical aspects of hedonic indices presented in the paper open promising directions for the development of Polish statistics of real estate prices.

An economic indicator faces two requirements. It should be reported in a timely manner and should not be significantly altered afterward to avoid erroneous messages. At the same time, it should reflect changing market conditions constantly and appropriately. These requirements are particularly challenging for housing price indices, since housing markets are subject to large temporal/seasonal changes and occasional structural changes. The purpose of this paper is to estimate a hedonic price index of condominiums of Tokyo, taking account of seasonal sample selection biases and structural changes in a way it enables us to report the index in a manner which is timely and not subject to change after reporting.

The paper proposes an overlapping‐period hedonic model (OPHM), in which a hedonic price index is calculated every month based on data in the “window” of a year ending this month (this month and previous 11 months). It also estimates standard hedonic housing price indexes under alternative assumptions: no structural change (“structurally restricted”: restricted hedonic model) and different structure for every month (“structurally unrestricted”: unrestricted hedonic model).

Results suggest that the structure of the housing market, including seasonality, changes over time, and these changes occur continuously over time. It is also demonstrated that structurally restricted indices that do not account for structural changes involve a large time lag compared with indices that do account for structural changes during periods with significant price fluctuations.

Following the financial crisis triggered by the US housing market, housing price index guidelines are currently being developed, with the United Nations, International Monetary Fund, and Organization for Economic Co‐operation and Development leading the way. These guidelines recommend that indices be estimated based on the hedonic method. We believe that the hedonic method proposed here will serve as a reference for countries that develop hedonic method‐based housing price indices in future.

In the many studies involving conventional housing price indices, whether those using the repeat‐sales method or hedonic method, there are few that have analyzed the problem of market structural changes. This paper is the first to construct a large database and systematically estimate the effect that changes in market structure have on housing price indices.

This study aims to show how hedonic methods can be used to compare the performance of the public and private sector housing markets in Costa Rica.

Hedonic price indexes are computed using the adjacent-period method. Average housing quality is measured by comparing hedonic and median price indexes. The relative performance of the public and private sector residential construction is compared by estimating separate hedonic models for each sector. A private sector price is then imputed for each house built in the public sector, and a public sector price is imputed for each house built in the private sector.

The real quality-adjusted price of private housing rose by 12 per cent between 2000 and 2013, whereas the price of private housing rose by 9 per cent. The average quality of private housing rose by 45 per cent, whereas that of public housing fell by 18 per cent. Nevertheless, the hedonic imputation analysis reveals that public housing could not be produced more cheaply in the private sector.

The quality of public housing has declined over time. The hedonic analysis shows that the decline is not because of a lack of competition between construction firms in the public sector. An alternative demand side explanation is provided.

This study applies hedonic methods in novel ways to compare the relative performance of the public and private housing sectors in Costa Rica. The results shed new light on the effectiveness of public sector housing programs.

The purpose of this paper is to examine if temporal aggregation matters in the construction of house price indices and to test the accuracy of alternative index construction methods.

Five index construction models based on the hedonic, repeat‐sales and hybrid methods are examined. The accuracy of the alternative index construction methods are examined using the mean squared error and out‐of‐sample technique. Monthly, quarterly, semi‐yearly and yearly indices are constructed for each of the methods and six null hypotheses are tested to examine the temporal aggregation effect.

Overall, the hedonic is the best method to use. While running separate regressions to estimate the index is best at the broader level of time aggregation like the annual, pooling data together and including time dummies to estimate the index is the best at the lower level of time aggregation. The repeat‐sales method is the least preferred method. The results also show that it is important to limit time to the lowest level of temporal aggregation when construction property price indices.

This paper provides alternative method, the mean squared error method based on an out‐of‐sample technique to evaluate the accuracy of alternative index construction methods.

The introduction of financial products like the property derivatives and home equity insurances to the financial market calls for accurate and robust property price indices. However, the index method and level of temporal aggregation to use still remain unresolved in the index construction literature. This paper contributes to fill these gaps.

The private rental market in Malta has expanded significantly in recent years, but as at 2020, no official rent index is yet published. This paper aims to construct such an index and explores the relative importance of structural, locational and neighbourhood factors to advertised rents.

The authors compile hedonic indices for advertised rents in Malta collected from publicly available sources using webscraping techniques. The database comprises more than 25,000 listings with information on various property attributes. Hedonic regressions are estimated using ordinary least squares and rent indices are computed using three alternative methods: the time dummy method, the rolling time dummy method and the average characteristics method. For the latter, indices are computed using the Laspeyres, Paasche and Fisher methods.

The results from the hedonic indices indicate that the annual growth rate in advertised rents was slowing down during 2019, albeit still remaining relatively high, while in 2020, advertised rents contracted sharply, amplified by the effects of COVID-19. The findings also reveal that advertised rental prices are significantly influenced by various structural, locational and neighbourhood factors.

This paper introduces the first rent index in Malta that will be used to monitor developments in the rental segment of the housing market and for financial stability purposes given the share of buy-to-let properties. It also provides various elasticities on the impact of property attributes on advertised rents in Malta. Finally, the study contributes to the literature on the effect of foreign-born residents on advertised rents.

Commonly used rent indices are based on average developments or expert opinions. Such indices often suffer from compositional biases or low data coverage. The purpose of this paper is to overcome these challenges using the authors' approach.

The authors construct a quality-adjusted rent index for the office market in Oslo using detailed data from 14,171 rental contracts.

The authors show that compositional biases can have a large impact on rental price developments. By adding building-fixed effects to a standard hedonic regression model, the authors show that the explanatory power increases considerably. Furthermore, indices excluding location-specific information, or which include less granular location controls than at the building level, portray quite a different picture of rent developments than indices that do take this into account. The authors also exploit information on contract signature date and find that a more timely detection of turning points can be achieved by using the signature date instead of the more typically used start date of the lease.

The study is confined to Norwegian data, and an avenue for future research would be to explore if similar results are obtained for other countries. A weakness with the paper is that authors' do not observe quality changes over time, such as renovation. Controlling for time-varying and unit-specific attributes in hedonic models for the commercial real estate (CRE) market would be useful to purge indices further for compositional effects and unobserved heterogeneity. While the authors do control for building-fixed effects, there are additional variations within a building (floor, view, sunlight, etc.) that the authors do not capture. Studies that could control for this would certainly be welcome, both in order to estimate the value of such amenities and to see how it affects estimated rent developments. Another promising avenue for future research is to link data on rental contracts in the CRE market with firm-specific information in order to explore how firm profitability and liquidity may affect rental contracts.

The authors show that the hedonic index yields a sharper fall in rents after the global financial crisis and more muted developments in the period between 2013 and 2015 than the average rent index. The results show that rents have followed their estimated equilibrium closely and have re-adjusted quickly in periods of deviation. From a financial stability perspective, the risk of a sharp fall in rents is reduced because rents often are in line with their fundamentals.

The authors find that a more timely detection of turning points can be achieved by using information on the signature date. This is an important finding. The financial system is heavily exposed toward CRE, and timely detection of turning points is critical for policymakers.

The financial system is heavily exposed toward the commercial real estate market and timely detection of turning points is of major importance to policymakers. Finally, the authors use our quality-adjusted rent index as the dependent variable in an error correction model. The authors find that employment and stock of offices are important explanatory variables. Moreover, the results show that rents have followed their estimated equilibrium path.

The basic purpose of this paper is to explore the relationship between the sustainability of construction on the one hand and market value, worth and property investment performance on the other hand. This paper aims to analyse price movements and price differences caused by different property characteristics.

Based on the estimated log‐linear hedonic regression model, a hedonic price index is calculated. Price movements subject to different property characteristics are examined by constructing various conditional hedonic price indexes.

The results reveal that, high‐quality flats or flats within preferred locations clearly outperform their competitors in terms of price stability during an overall market downturn. However, it is also shown that contemporary building descriptions or specifications of transactions within property databases are not yet sufficient and need to be widened to meet forthcoming challenges. Therefore, an “integrated building performance approach” is introduced and a proposal for the step‐wise improvement of building descriptions is made.

The paper shows that efforts need to be undertaken by the property profession in combining and transferring financial performance data along with information that is indicative of a building's contribution to sustainable development.

The paper offers insights into the relationship between the sustainability of construction and market value.

The purpose of this paper is to construct a hedonic property price index in the segmented housing market.

Three different research questions are investigated. The first considers how to identify separate local housing markets, with the use of a regression‐tree approach, and the second concerns when it is possible to update a price index, with a recursive regression approach. Finally, the question about seasonal adjustment is investigated.

Overall, the hedonic approach is the best method to use. Moreover, the County of Stockholm is not one market in the sense that the market can be represented by only one property price index. It can be best described as a number of different sub‐markets where the property prices grow differently. The results suggest that there exist at least five different price indexes in the County of Stockholm. The results also support that recursive regressions are two appropriate methods to answer the research questions. Here, the empirical analysis suggests that the parameter estimates converge relatively fast toward the estimate using all observations.

The paper illustrates how to derive sub‐markets in the construction of a price index and when to update a price index series.

The introduction of new financial products, such as property derivatives, to the market has made the construction and quality of property price indexes more important. High quality price indexes are vital when it comes to, for example, pricing property derivatives. The paper facilitates this.