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The housing market in South Africa has the potential to drive economic growth and attract foreign investment, but it can be affected by various risk factors. This paper aims to conduct an empirical analysis of the effect of country risk components on the housing market in South Africa.

Linear and nonlinear autoregressive distributed lag (ARDL) models were used to evaluate the effects of the economic, financial and political risk factors of country risk on the prices of different segments of houses based on 276 monthly time-series data from January1995 to December 2015.

First, the results established that the three housing indices were more sensitive to political risk in the long run. Second, short run results showed that the three housing indices were largely influenced by their own preceding adjustments in the short run albeit minimal influences from political risk. Third, large housing segments indicated a higher magnitude of the country risk effect in South Africa.

This paper concluded that the response of housing prices to changes in the country risk components differed across the three segments of the housing market in South Africa. Consequently, this study presented the first comparison of the reactions of different housing segments to different components country risk.

Purpose – This chapter examines the factors that influence the ability of anti-gentrification movements to get media coverage for their core policy goals. It takes, as a point of departure, the suggestion that the media supports the growth machine and is not inclined to provide favorable coverage to movements trying to limit development.

Design/methodology/approach – In comparing six newspapers’ coverage of anti-gentrification movements in San Francisco's Mission District and West Oakland, we suggest a more nuanced theoretical understanding of media coverage of urban movements against development. The analysis of newspaper articles published in six Bay Area newspapers from 1995 to 2005 illustrates tremendous variations in favorability of coverage between the two movements.

Findings – There are also large variations in the extent to which movements’ core policy goals are represented in newspaper articles. Although the Mission District received more coverage than the West Oakland movement, the West Oakland movement was better able in getting its core policy goals into its coverage than the Mission District movement. The West Oakland movement was more effective in generating media attention for its core policy goals through its organized public protests than the Mission District movement.

Originality/value – This chapter adds to the genre of research analyzing newspaper coverage of social movements. It demonstrates that the coverage is more nuanced than previously reported. Factors such as phase in the movement and the framing of the issues are related to whether the media covers the story in a negative or positive manner.

In 2016 all new houses in England and Wales must be zero carbon. To date most work in zero carbon housing has been carried out on detached family housing typologies. Practice has shown that one of the overriding factors in the struggle to achieve zero carbon status (Code for Sustainable Homes Level 6) is the projected significant increase in construction cost. While grant funding can offset some of this increase, further costs savings will be required to allow developers to deliver affordable homes within reasonable profit margins. One result of this will be a reduction in design quality; which will impact on the quality of the spaces provided and the robustness and longevity of the construction and finishes. In order to deliver better design standards, higher density attached family housing models should be considered to ensure that a proportion of the projected increase in cost of the building fabric can be transferred to the internal volume of the house, thus achieving better quality living spaces. The following paper reviews the context for future housing provision in the UK and examines two existing medium density terraced housing developments. The existing examples reflect two contrasting approaches: one derived from low-energy principles utilising minimum space standards, the other reflecting the need for high quality spaces but at premium cost. A new medium density terrace model is proposed that deals with these conflicting demands to demonstrate that it is possible to provide affordable, high quality, higher density, family housing whilst meeting low energy targets.

The introduction of higher density housing development within suburban areas has been favoured by state governments in Australia as a means of improving the efficiency of land use, reducing the costs associated with the delivery of government services and promoting home ownership. However it has been hypothesised that such development may have a negative impact on neighbourhood social structure, for example reducing diversity as measured by economic status and family makeup or in local housing market performance as measured by price. This paper aims to test this hypothesis.

The methodology employs a quantitative approach with principal components analysis used to capture the main social structure of the Adelaide Statistical Division. Social constructs, the product of principal components analysis, are used to measure outcomes of higher density development as measured by community or household change.

The results in this paper show that densification has had significant impact on certain neighbourhoods in the Adelaide Statistical Division notably in relation to their built form but not necessarily in neighbourhood structure or housing market performance.

The findings are significant in highlighting that increasing medium densities and improving tenure mix may not necessarily improve the opportunities for socio‐economic mix or for cultural diversity with implications for policy makers seeking to follow strategies based on the promotion of mixed communities.

This paper seeks to add new research on the outcomes of higher density development in Australia in three ways. First, social constructs, the product of principal components analysis, are used to measure outcomes of higher density development as measured by community or household change. Second, the paper investigates the development at the local level where impacts are likely to be most important. Third, the analysis identifies a before and after scenario for those suburbs where higher density development has been most significant.

In the housing sector in Jordan, sales advertisings are rarely used, though they, potentially, increase profits and sales and expand development geographically. The purpose of this paper is to investigate the use of sales advertising in the emerging housing market in the city of Irbid, Jordan. The aim is to reveal the effect of the use of advertising on sales and production of housing, and the obstacles that developers may face when advertising.

The study elicited data through long, face‐to‐face interviews using semi‐structured and open‐ended questionnaires with 25 private sector developers. The data collected included companies' profiles; housing annual production; geographical location; sales and prices; and marketing and advertising.

The major finding of the study is that the use of sales advertising in the housing market in Irbid is low. The major advertising methods include public relations and word of mouth along with a limited use of newspaper and on‐site advertising. The obstacles developers face include lack of conviction, unawareness about advertising effect, lack of advertising professionals, lack of skills in advertisement designs and inability to afford it.

Future research is needed to undertake statistical references through a comprehensive survey of a large sample of developers from different geographical areas around Jordan.

The study recommends finding means to encourage developers to use advertising and to introduce new media such as the internet.

As the first of its kind, the research pinpoints to developers the value of sales advertising, as marketing concepts, to attract buyers, increase sales and profit and to expand geographically around Jordan.

Housing has always been a significant aspiration of family expression and distinctly priciest investment by household. It plays a momentous role in the country's economy and so central to the societal well-being that is emplaced in the United Nation Universal declaration of Human rights. Yet in developed and developing world alike, cities struggle to provide decent housing for lower and middle income population. The provision of affordable housing is a major policy concern around the world with Malaysia being no exception; rising income hardly keep pace with price hike of housing unit and housing interventions has majorly concentrated on demand side leading to a non-responsive supply sector. Therefore, this paper highlights affordable housing issues pertaining Malaysia. It formulates Malaysian Map of affordability and conducts an evaluation of global housing schemes to better identify policy priorities for Malaysia. It's significant to harmonize supply and demand side factors in the housing market to ensure that housing supply fits the needs of citizens based on the location, price and target group. In case of Malaysia supply oriented initiative are of urgency in short and medium run. This must be supported by long term demand side schemes in parallel. Convergence of these two factors is essential for a balanced equilibrium and obtaining affordability.

This paper aims to examine house price drivers in Dubai, addressing nonlinearity and heterogeneity.

The study applies a combination of linear and nonlinear, as well as quantile regression, specifications to address these concerns and better explain the real-world phenomenon.

The study shows the double-log quantile regression approach is an overarching description of house price drivers, confirming that not only the price of housing and its determinants are non-linearly related but also that their relationship is heterogeneous across house price quantiles. The findings reveal the prevalence of sub-market differentials in house price sensitivity to house attributes such as size (in square meters), location and type of house, as well as government laws. The study also identifies the peaks and deflation, as well as the rebounding nature of the house price bubble in Dubai.

The data used are limited, in that information on only a few house attributes was available. Future research should include data on other house attributes such as house quality, zip codes and composition.

The findings of this study are expected to suggest results with significant ramifications for researchers, practitioners and policy makers. From a policy perspective, there is an obvious interest in understanding whether the price of housing is affected by different attributes differently along its distribution.

This study allows policy makers, developers and buyers of higher-priced houses to behave differently from buyers of lower-priced or medium-priced houses.

Methodologically, it demonstrates alternative linear and nonlinear, as well as quantile regression, specifications to address two increasing concerns in the house price literature: nonlinearity and heterogeneity. Unlike most other studies, this study used a rich data (140,039 day-to-day transactions of 10 years’ pooled data). The Dubai housing market presents an interesting case. UAE (Dubai, in particular) is named as the second-hottest marketplace for global residential property investors, ahead of Singapore, the UK and Hong Kong (Savills plc, 2015).

Studies have shown a correlation and predictive impact of sentiment on asset prices, including Twitter sentiment on markets and individual stocks. This paper aims to determine whether there exists such a correlation between Twitter sentiment and property prices.

The authors construct district-level sentiment indices for every district of Istanbul using a dictionary-based polarity scoring method applied to a data set of 1.7 million original tweets that mention one or more of those districts. The authors apply a spatial lag model to estimate the relationship between Twitter sentiment regarding a district and housing prices or housing price appreciation in that district.

The findings indicate a significant but negative correlation between Twitter sentiment and property prices and price appreciation. However, the percentage of check-in tweets is found to be positively correlated with prices and price appreciation.

The analysis is cross-sectional, and therefore, unable to answer the question of whether Twitter can Granger-cause changes in housing markets. Future research should focus on creation of a property-focused lexicon and panel analysis over a longer time horizon.

The findings suggest a role for Twitter-derived sentiment in predictive models for local variation in property prices as it can be observed in real time.

This is the first study to analyze the link between sentiment measures derived from Twitter, rather than surveys or news media, on property prices.

The COVID-19 impact across major sectors did not exempt the low-cost housing (LCH) sub-sector. This may have increased the existing LCH demand-supply gap, especially in developing countries such as Malaysia. Studies showed that government policy (GP) aids in mitigating COVID-19 impact on goods and services, including housing-related issues. However, there is an academic literature scarcity regarding GP on LCH demand-supply gap during the COVID-19 crisis in Malaysia. Hence, this study aims to investigate the moderating effect of GP on the relationship between LCH demand-supply gap and COVID-19 impact in Malaysia.

The research utilised a quantitative method in collating the data from four major cities in Malaysia. SmartPLS was utilised to analyse the usable 305 questionnaires retrieved from respondents. Structuralist Theory supported the developed framework.

Findings show that GP moderates the relationships between the LCH demand-supply gap and COVID-19 impact on Malaysia's low-income groups' (LIGs) homeownership delivery. It implies that the study's findings provide more understanding of issues influencing LCH demand-supply gap in the COVID-19 era via applying GP to mitigate the gap and improve homeownership for the disadvantaged.

The study intends to stir policymakers toward formulating policies and programmes that will mitigate LCH demand-supply gap during the present and future pandemics.

Besides the theoretical value of the developed model, policymakers can use the study's recommendations to mitigate future LCH demand-supply gaps during pandemics in developing countries using Malaysia as a case study.

Housing sufficiency is an indication of national development, and in recognition of this, a longstanding development objective of the Malaysian Government is the provision of affordable housing. The government has introduced various policies, schemes and regulations to increase housing supply. However, despite these measures, homeownership rates are dropping, and housing prices are outstripping inflation. For this reason, this paper aims to explain the determinants of housing choices. The issues in affordable housing supply in Malaysia are that of shortage and distributions. The problem of distribution is largely addressable through choice reconciliations.

The research is based on a cross-sectional survey questionnaire, comprising 20 determinants and 468 householders/users. The questionnaire was developed via a review of the literature and the authors’ experience. The survey forms are administered by hand.

Six determinants were found to be extremely important to households’ choice of housing. The Kaiser’s measure of sampling adequacy (MSA) indicated that the strength of the relationships among the determinants was strong (MSA = 0.762). Bartlett’s test of sphericity, was significant χ² (1035) = 5013.814, p < 0.001), indicating the data were drawn from the same population and that the determinants were related. Using principal component analysis, all the 20 determinants were reduced to seven factors that accounted for some 60 per cent of the total proportion communalities. The factors were general factor, financial factor, building factor, income factor, accessibility factor, market factor and location factor.

Previous research only addressed factors affecting housing price, not a choice. This is the first study that explains determinants of housing choice determinants in Malaysia. This is the first study that involves large respondents. Previous research addressed housing in general and not affordable housing. The results will be useful to developers, homebuyers and policy makers towards affordable housing delivery.