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With the marked increase in the awareness of earthquake risks following the Canterbury earthquakes, the purpose of this paper is to assess if the reassessment of risk has influenced rents for office accommodation in commercial buildings. Two contrasting office markets are examined: New Zealand’s largest market within a high-risk earthquake zone – Wellington, and the country’s largest market within a low-risk zone – Auckland.

A sample of 252 leasing transactions were collected from a proprietary database of Colliers International, one of the largest commercial brokerage firms in New Zealand. Hedonic pricing models were developed to isolate the effects of building seismic strength on office rents.

Wellington office market rents tend to increase with higher earthquake strength (New Building Standard) ratings, all other factors held equal. In contrast, rents in Auckland, a low-risk earthquake area, do not exhibit such price effects.

The study provides estimates of the economic value associated with seismic retrofits which are vital for building owners’ decision making who must weigh retrofit costs against the economic benefits of doing so.

This study provides the first empirical analysis of office rents in New Zealand and the first quantitative analysis, internationally, of the impact of earthquake risk on commercial rents.

Numerical superstition is well-known in Asian countries and can influence decision-making in many markets, from financial investment to purchasing a house. This study aims to determine the house price effects of superstition and understand if these have changed over time.

Using sales transactions of freestanding houses in Auckland, New Zealand, the authors use hedonic price analysis to investigate whether superstitious beliefs associated with lucky and unlucky house numbers affect property values.

The analysis reveals ethnic Chinese buyers in Auckland displayed superstitious home buying behaviour in the period 2003-2006 by attributing value to homes with street addresses starting or ending with the lucky number eight. However, this willing to pay higher prices for lucky numbers was not reflected in the analysis of 2011-2015 sales transactions. The disappearance of superstition price effects may indicate that ethnic Chinese in the Auckland housing market have, over time, assimilated New Zealand’s Western culture and have become less superstitious.

Unlike previous studies, the authors parse buyers into two populations of homebuyers, ethnic Chinese and non-Chinese purchasers, and model the two groups’ housing transactions independently to more accurately establish if numerical superstition influences house prices.

Housing affordability in New Zealand is placing significant pressure on the country’s social housing sector with increased demand for public sector accommodation. A common belief suggests that social housing has a negative effect on nearby residential property values. This study aims to develop proximity and concentration measures of social housing to determine if their spatial distribution affects property values.

Using over 32,000 residential sales transactions from Auckland (New Zealand) during a three-year period (2014–2016), this study applies standard hedonic OLS framework with the addition of spatial autoregressive model and spatiotemporal autoregressive model to test if proximity and concentration of social housing influence residential property values.

The research found that private houses that share boundaries with public housing are discounted by 1.7%–3.3% depending on the socio-economic status of the submarket. The authors find that wealthier submarkets are better equipped to absorbing negative externalities attached to social housing. Proximity measures tend to peak at 250 m, with houses discounted up to 5% within that distance. Concentration levels of social housing had a greater influence on the private residential market. At low levels of concentration, houses in areas of high and low socio-economic levels were discounted by approximately 6.5%. The discount does not remain uniform and the gap between the two areas is apparent at medium and high concentration levels. The negative effect was the highest − 23% – in the neighbourhoods that were socially and economically deprived.

The study’s findings can assist policymakers in informing strategies on the future social housing initiatives. The findings suggest that a dispersed development strategy that incorporates a balanced mix of tenure and socio-economic groups should be preferred over a high-density social housing concentrated in already deprived neighbourhoods.

Automated valuation models (AVMs) are statistical asset pricing models omnipresent in residential real estate markets, where they inform property tax assessment, mortgage underwriting and marketing. Use of these asset pricing models outside of residential real estate is rare. The purpose of the paper is to explore key characteristics of commercial office lease contracts and test an application in estimating office market rental prices using an AVM.

The authors apply a semi-log ordinary least squares hedonic regression approach to estimate either contract rent or the total costs of occupancy (TOC) (“grossed up” rent). Furthermore, the authors adopt a training/test split in the observed leasing data to evaluate the accuracy of using these pricing models for prediction. In the study, 80% of the samples are randomly selected to train the AVM and 20% was held back to test accuracy out of sample. A naive prediction model is used to establish accuracy prediction benchmarks for the AVM using the out-of-sample test data. To evaluate the performance of the AVM, the authors use a Monte Carlo simulation to run the selection process 100 times and calculate the test dataset's mean error (ME), mean absolute error (MAE), mean absolute percentage error (MAPE), median absolute percentage error (MdAPE), coefficient of dispersion (COD) and the training model's r-squared statistic (R²) for each run.

Using a sample of office lease transactions in Sydney CBD (Central Business District), Australia, the authors demonstrate accuracy statistics that are comparable to those used in residential valuation and outperform a naive model.

AVMs in an office leasing context have significant implications for practice. First, an AVM can act as an impartial arbiter in market rent review disputes. Second, the technology may enable frequent market rent reviews as a lease negotiation strategy that allows tenants and property owners to share market risk by limiting concerns over high costs and adversarial litigation that can emerge in a market rent review dispute.

Decision-making behaviour of property investors has been the focus of real estate research for decades. Yet, there is no consensus on a generally accepted behavioural model that suits all market conditions and investment peculiarities. While scholars have emphasized the significance of rational reasoning and cognitive influences on property investment decision-making preferences, gaps remain regarding the impacts of market disruptions on property investment decision-making behaviour. This paper, therefore, explores the institutional framework as a theoretical basis for understanding property investment decision-making behaviour amidst market disruptions.

This paper reports a systematic review of pertinent theories that have explored decision-making behaviour. Commencing with an index search of high impact peer-reviewed journals, a snowball identification of relevant citations was also deployed to assemble theories from the field of psychology, sociology, economics and urban studies. Although a preliminary dataset of 82 papers with relevant decision-making theories was identified, the final dataset comprised 27 papers and 7 theories. The identified theories were reviewed accordingly.

The outcome of this study suggests that the institutional framework offers a robust approach to property investment decision-making amidst market disruptions, especially because it recognizes the dynamism in the investment environment and the roles of formal and informal rules that exist therein.

This study advances the current understanding of property investment decision-making behaviour by recognising the dynamism of the investment environment and how factors such as principles, laws, tradition and routines can lead to an established and legitimate standard of reasoning. By integrating both rational and cognitive attributes, the study provides a holistic perspective to property investors' decision-making behaviour in response to market disruptions.

This study explores the challenges of access to finance from local financial institutions (LFIs), i.e. local banks, for public–private partnership (PPP) infrastructure project delivery in Nigeria. The aim is to provide useful insights that could inform policy solutions to ease the local funding of PPP infrastructure projects in Nigeria and, by extension, other developing economies.

Adopting a qualitative research methodology, the study engaged PPP stakeholders involved in securing funds for PPP infrastructure projects in Nigeria. A total of 15 PPP stakeholders, drawn from the public and private sectors, were purposively selected and their views on the research problem obtained through recorded telephone interviews. The opinions of the research participants were subsequently analyzed and the results discussed with the outcome of the examination of relevant literature.

The study found that the significant factors affecting access to local finance for PPP infrastructure projects in Nigeria include low capital base by LFIs, weak project viability, lack of capacity to manage PPP-related activities, inconsistent government policy, poor legal framework and public perception of PPP.

Insights from this study are useful for PPP stakeholders in mitigating the barriers that influence access to local finance for PPP infrastructure projects in Nigeria and other developing economies. This study is also useful in enhancing the current policy structure in developing countries as a way of revamping the existing infrastructure framework through LFIs.

This study provides clarity on the peculiar challenges impeding access to finance from LFIs for PPP infrastructure projects in Nigeria and will be useful for debt providers and policymakers in evaluating the bankability of PPP infrastructure projects in Nigeria and other developing countries.

Global demand growth for new cell phone towers is extraordinary. However, many markets feature onerous regulation that impedes the rolling out of new infrastructure. Regulators are primarily concerned with tower aesthetics and the perceived impact on house prices. Focusing on isolating the impact of tower aesthetic, this paper aims to discover whether proximity to cell phone towers influences house prices.

Hedonic modeling is used to measure the influence of proximity to cell phone towers on house prices in the urban area of Christchurch, New Zealand, based on 9,715 transactions over the period from 2004 to 2010. Three functional proximity forms are tested separately.

No statistically significant connection between cell phone towers and house prices was observed.

In light of this study's results and emerging empirical evidence on the proximity-price relationship, New Zealand's recently introduced National Environmental Standards for Telecommunication Facilities may serve as a model of public policy on tower siting for other markets.

This paper aims to determine if proximity to cell phone towers influences house prices with a focus on isolating the impact of tower aesthetics on nearby property values.

Sales transaction data from the Auckland Region during 2005‐2007 were analysed using a series of hedonic models testing various proximity specifications across two populations of cell towers: residential‐only and global (all towers).

The study could not establish a relationship between cell towers and house prices with the exception of armed monopole towers located in residential areas due to such towers' acute visual disamenity.

The study's findings can be directly applied to residential valuation practice and can assist government regulators and telecommunication companies in siting new cell towers.

This research provides three distinct methodological improvements: unconventional geocoding that improves spatial accuracy, separate analysis of towers in residential areas that enhances internal validity and inclusion of tower mast data to isolate the impact of tower aesthetics.

This paper aims to evaluate the impact of submarkets on water view premiums of residential properties and investigate the correlation between submarket view premium and socio‐economic status.

Over 53,000 residential sales transactions from 2004 to 2006 are analysed using the hedonic method. The Auckland region is divided into 17 submarkets with similar water view scarcities. The region is analysed along with each individual submarket in order to determine if significant differences in view premiums exist.

The empirical results indicate that the regionwide model chronically over‐ or under‐estimates view premiums, for example, the regionwide model estimates that a wide water view adds 18 per cent to a home's value while the same view amenity adds only 5 per cent in modest West Harbour but 54 per cent in posh Mission Bay.

The study's findings can be directly applied to residential valuation practice and in particular mass appraisal systems.

This research fills a gap in the body of knowledge relating to water view externalities by investigating the differing price impacts across submarkets.

The purpose of this paper is to explore the changes in commercial office occupiers’ preferences in their building choice as a result of a recent natural disaster which triggered policy changes in building safety.

This study follows a qualitative research design comprising semi-structured one-on-one interviews with 24 property professionals (commercial leasing agents and property managers) in Auckland, New Zealand. A thematic analysis was employed for identifying, analysing and reporting themes emerged within data.

Tenants across New Zealand now incorporate earthquake issues in their leasing decisions. Most tenants are familiar with the impending policy changes related to earthquake-prone buildings. The degree to which building standards are incorporated into office occupiers’ choice varies with the size of the organisation and their willingness to invest in their corporate social responsibility. A certain level of overreaction was observed in tenants’ behaviour in the face of risk and uncertainty following the earthquakes. However, risk appears to be subsiding and emphasis is placed on availability of space in desirable locations.

The findings are limited due to a non-random sample selection and a small sample size. Further quantitative research is required to determine if office tenants place a premium on occupying seismically safe buildings since forthcoming regulatory changes have been announced.

This study provides evidence that imminent building policy changes are efficient in raising public awareness and informing perceptions of potential losses following a recent natural disaster event. Building owners can potentially capitalise on tenants’ desire to occupy high quality space.

This is the first study that develops the knowledge base identifying the perceptions of tenants about seismic safety of buildings since the Canterbury earthquakes. The study also contributes to the literature on the market effect of policy changes triggered by a focusing event.