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This paper introduces a behavioral framework to model residential relocation decision in island areas, at which the decision in question is influenced by the characteristics of island regions, policy variables related to accessibility measures, and housing prices at the proposed island area, as well as personal, household (HH), job, and latent characteristics of the decision makers.

The model framework corresponds to an integrated choice and latent variable (ICLV) setting where the discrete choice model includes latent variables that capture attitudes and perceptions of the decision makers. The latent variable model is composed of a group of structural equations describing the latent variables as a function of observable exogenous variables and a group of measurement equations, linking the latent variables to observable indicators.

An empirical study has been developed for the Greek Aegean island area. Data were collected from 900 HHs in Greece contacted via telephone. The HHs were presented hypothetical scenarios involving policy variables, where 2010 was the reference year. ICLV binary logit (BL) and mixed binary logit (MBL) relocation choice models were estimated sequentially. Findings suggest that MBL models are superior to BL models, while both the policy and the latent variables significantly affect the relocation decision and improve considerably the models' goodness of fit. Sample enumeration method is finally used to aggregate the results over the Greek population.

The social scientific and humanities literature on house and home continues to grow (Perkins, Thorns, & Winstanley, 2002a; Perkins, Thorns, Winstanley, & Newton, 2002b; King, 2004; Mallett, 2004; Blunt & Dowling, 2006; Gorman-Murray & Dowling, 2007). Researchers have interpreted home in a number of ways. For some, it represents a centre, a place in which possessions and display represent identity. For others it is the existential space of being where the nature and limits of centre and universe, sacred and profane, are created and maintained. Home can also be a material place in which the production and organisation of housing and neighbourhoods necessarily entails certain kinds of social interaction and relations. The recognition here that housing has both a use and exchange value is crucially important. Depending on one's cultural group, home is imbued with greater or lesser degrees of privatism and home-centredness. Some writers see the growth of technologies that permit the development of home-based work and individualised leisure practices as factors likely to strengthen home as the centre of future activity. Homes are also important in the creation of privacy, tranquillity, stability, conventional behaviour, meaning and transformation.

The real estate market has evolved significantly over the past 10 years and has experienced rapid growth throughout the world in its various forms. Many emerging countries witnessed the significant growth in their commercial real estate markets that became a stable sector of their economies. These countries, after developing a reliable commercial real estate base within their economies subsequently developed real estate financial markets. The growth of the real estate investment trusts, REITs, markets in many countries within the past decade helped attract global capital that facilitated additional investments in local real estate developments. Significantly, this period of time may have witnessed a higher degree of integration of real estate with the broader financial markets due in large part to the securitization of mortgages. Yet the general real estate market was also impacted in many parts of the world with rising prices and subsequent price collapses. This section focuses on the various areas of the global real estate market and the changes that it has encountered as examined by researchers of real estate. This chapter also examines the recent trends in global real estate markets and explores how these changes have affected the broader investment community.

In this paper we show, by means of an example of its application to the problem of house price forecasting, an approach to attribute selection and dependence modelling utilising the Gamma Test (GT), a non-linear analysis algorithm that is described. The GT is employed in a two-stage process: first the GT drives a Genetic Algorithm (GA) to select a useful subset of features from a large dataset that we develop from eight economic statistical series of historical measures that may impact upon house price movement. Next we generate a predictive model utilising an Artificial Neural Network (ANN) trained to the Mean Squared Error (MSE) estimated by the GT, which accurately forecasts changes in the House Price Index (HPI). We present a background to the problem domain and demonstrate, based on results of this methodology, that the GT was of great utility in facilitating a GA based approach to extracting a sound predictive model from a large number of inputs in a data-point sparse real-world application.

This research chapter argues lawyers, not just bankers, for good and bad have been involved in all aspects of the current financial crisis. Indeed after examining and assessing various civil causes of action related to the “Mortgage Meltdown” and its aftermath, it appears if lawyers had been less involved or had raised warnings about legal risks as well as economic ones, whether the financial impact would have been so disastrous and widespread. Indeed by raising cautionary flags earlier, lawyers might have better served both the clients’ and the public's long-term interests. This view thus complements issues related to criminally prosecuting mortgage fraud that has also seen explosive growth and where lawyers have again played central roles. Lawyers have been involved at the back end too in terms of legislation or resolving issues such as bankruptcies and foreclosures.

The chapter examines several causes of action the media have reported being raised by various parties and how they illustrate the role lawyers, regulations, and legislation have played in the origins and evolution of the current crisis. The cases explored involve individual parties and class actions. The chapter also analyzes in detail a case representing opposite ends of the origination and foreclosure closure spectrum by describing a derivative shareholder suit against corporate officers and directors actively involved in creating the subprime mess, who were then sued for covering up the inevitable results from failed loans in the reports to shareholders. It thus illustrates the legal complexities emerging from the abuse of complex financial and organizational structures impacting many investors. Finally the chapter concludes by arguing there is a public policy need not only for financial regulatory reform but also for a tightening in the professional standards and regulatory penalties imposed on lawyers involved in such transactions.

Transaction costs, responsive housing supply, rent controls, tenant protection, and access to credit affect residential mobility – these different parts of housing policy are included in what has been defined as housing regimes, which embrace regulations, laws, norms, and ideology as well as economic factors. In this chapter, we investigate how these regimes change by using institutional theories of path dependence. We use Sweden as an example and study three Swedish housing market reforms during the past decades that may have affected residential mobility, each related to one of the main institutional pillars of housing provision: tenure legislation, taxation, and finance. More precisely, we study the development of the rental regulation since the late 1960s, the tax reform in 1991, and the new reforms on mortgages since 2010. What caused these reforms? What were the main mechanisms behind them, and why did they occur at the time they did? We argue, besides affecting residential mobility, these reforms have the common feature of including interesting elements of path dependence and forming critical junctures that have led the development on to a new path. Institutions of tenure legislation, housing finance, and taxation are often claimed to have effects on residential mobility. Although they are seldom designed with the explicit aim of supporting (or counteracting) residential mobility, they may sometimes do so as more or less unintended consequences.

This chapter presents projections of residential development in Wappinger Creek watershed of Dutchess County, New York in the Hudson River Valley. A spatial econometric model is developed based on data from a geographical information system (GIS) of county-level socio-economic trends, tax parcel attributes, town-level zoning restrictions, location variables, and bio-geophysical constraints including slope, soil type, riparian and agricultural zones. Monte Carlo simulation is employed to distribute spatially explicit projections of land-use change under various residential development scenarios. Scenario analysis indicates the likelihood of continued residential, decentralized development patterns in formerly agricultural and forested parcels. Policy scenarios demonstrate possible courses of action to direct development and protect watershed health.