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This study aims to identify the pandemic’s impact on house rents by applying a rental gradient analysis to compare the pre-and post-COVID-19 periods in Auckland. The micro-level household census data from the Integrated Data Infrastructure of Statistics New Zealand is also applied to scrutinise this WFH trend as a robustness check.

Since the outbreak of COVID-19, work-from-home (WFH) and e-commerce have become much more common in many cities. Many news reports have contended that households are leaving city centres and moving into bigger and better houses in the suburbs or rural areas. This emerging trend has been redefining the traditional theory of residential location choices. Proximity to central business district (CBD) is no longer the most critical consideration in choosing one’s residence. WFH and e-commerce flatten the traditional bid rent curve from the city centre.

The authors examined micro-level housing rental listings in 242 suburbs of the Auckland Region from January 2013 to December 2021 (108 months) and found that the hedonic price gradient models suggest that there has been a trend of rental gradient flattening and that its extent was almost doubled in 2021. Rents are also found to be increasing more in lower-density suburbs.

The results imply that the pandemic has accelerated the trend of WFH and e-commerce. The authors further discuss whether the trend will be a transient phenomenon or a long-term shift.

Suppose an organisation is concerned about productivity and performance issues due to a companywide ability to WFH. In that case, some standard key performance indicators for management and employees could be implemented. Forward-thinking cities need to focus on attracting skilful workers by making WFH a possible solution, not by insisting on the primacy of antiquated nine-to-five office cultures.

WFH has traditionally encountered resistance, but more and more companies are adopting WFH policies in this post-COVID era. The early rental gradient and the micro-level household data analysis all confirm that the WFH trend is emerging and will likely be a long-term shift. Instead of resisting the change, organisations should improve their remote work policies and capabilities for this WFH trend.

So far, empirical studies of post-COVID urban restructuring have been limited. This study aims to empirically test such an urban metamorphosis by identifying the spatial and temporal impacts of COVID on house rental gradients in the Auckland Region, New Zealand. The authors apply rental gradient analysis to test this urban restructuring hypothesis because the method considers the spatial-temporal differences, i.e. a difference-in-differences between pre-and post-pandemic period against the distance measured from the city centre. The method can control for the spatial difference and the endogeneity involved.

The elevation of a residential building, or façade, affords aesthetic and functional value to tenants. Façades embody the design of the core product, i.e. the building’s unit. When carefully executed, they contribute to the attractiveness, livability and sustainability of urban areas. The purpose of this study is to show how façades influence consumer decision, and to identify the consumers affected more by façades, i.e., product design.

Hinging on notions from product design and appearance, this research underscores the ways by which façades affect potential tenants. It also proposes that personality dimensions (i.e. concern with own physical appearance and view of achievement) identify the tenants affected more by façades. A study involving 1,091 consumers was performed to test the hypotheses.

Functional and aesthetic façades facilitated the tenant decision to buy or rent a living unit in three ways: attraction, convection and conversion. Two tenant segments (performers and egotists) were the most affected by façades. Hence, key consumer segments including self-actualizers would be less influenced by product design.

Construction companies should focus on delivering functional, aesthetic and well-maintained façades to boost satisfaction and sales. They should view the resources allocated to this purpose as an investment. Certain tenants are more affected by façades. Companies should identify the consumer segments more affected by design cues to better respond to their preferences. Policymakers are encouraged to set guidelines that foster well-executed façades in urban areas.

This research underscored the ways by which the façades of residential buildings shape consumer decision. In addition, it provided a typology to help pinpoint the tenants more affected by façades. Finally, it elaborated design theories in the context of residential building façades, which can be used by future researchers to understand the role of façade in fulfilling tenants’ needs and expectations.

The study of house prices has become more relevant in recent times after the global financial crisis. Using a housing data set from three regions of Ghana (collated from real estate agents), the purpose of this paper is to estimate the relative importance of housing attributes to house prices.

The hedonic regression analysis conducted indicates that location is the most powerful determinant of house prices. Other relevant factors are the number of bedrooms, the number of floors, the total floor area, land size, age of the house and luxury finishing.

The implications of these results are many. Policy wise, the study provides an evidence-based empirical study that supports the need for better urban planning to improve communities, which in turn is associated with house price appreciations. Homeowners, investors and creditors, particularly mortgage lenders could be the immediate beneficiaries. Drawing on this, improved urban planning could mitigate strategic defaults that results from house prices falling below mortgage loan balances. This is important for financial market stability.

The paper provides a comprehensive and unique understanding of the hedonic determinants of house prices in Ghana. Future studies could examine the effect of location upon mortgage lending in Ghana.

This study aims to explicitly explore the criteria or attributes that would influence buyer decision on purchasing residential property in Malaysia.

Generally, a total of 80 respondents participated in this study, and they hail from two states in Malaysia, namely, Kuala Lumpur and Selangor. This study has structured the respondents’ demographic profiles into different categories such as gender, age, marital status, race, education, type of buyer and income level. For the purpose of analysis, this study has incorporated a versatile fuzzy approach known as the analytic hierarchy process to fulfil the objective of study. From the previous literatures, the extracted variables consist of home amenities, location, pricing, developer, financing, structural factor and community amenities.

The results from priority vector indicate that buyers give higher rank to the pricing (0.2330) criteria as the most influencing factor in buying residential property, followed by other criteria such as community amenities (0.1450), location (0.1430), financing (0.1420), structural factor (0.1260), home amenities (0.1060) and developer (0.1040) in Kuala Lumpur and Selangor. In addition, the consistency index of 0.00384, which is lower than 0.10 (rule of thumb), postulates that the respondents clearly understood the question requirements and there is no inconsistency involved in the result.

This study attempts to discover how all those seven elements influence buyer decision on purchasing residential property. The results indicate that the outcome seems to be reliable and justifiable with the current period in the context of Malaysia housing sector.

This study is expected to provide more insights into the consistency of attributes that influence the purchase of residential property in the context of Malaysia. The points highlighted in this study are expected to benefit various parties such as potential home buyers, housing developers, marketers and government policy regulators, as well as academic institutions, to design a better policy or blueprint that can enhance the development of the housing sector in Malaysia.

This paper aims to investigate the effects of school quality (SQ) on residential property prices in Johannesburg, South Africa. Previous studies have empirically examined the quality of private and public schools without a standard proxy that is accepted in the literature. As a result, this paper extends the literature to the global south by the effect that SQ has on residential property price changes in the local markets of the City of Johannesburg.

The research adopts the hedonic pricing model to evaluate and quantify the impact that the structural attributes such as erf size; number of bedrooms and bathrooms; and SQ measured by pass rates, sport rankings and quality of facilities have on house prices. A total of 2,763 property transactions covering the Kensington and Observatory areas of the City of Johannesburg over the period 2010 and 2020 were obtained from the deeds registry and used for the empirical analysis.

The study finds that SQ has a positive impact on house prices. When the average pass rate of the model school increases by 1%, all other things being equal, house prices also increase by 1.8%. This suggests that people who live closer to the model school are willing to pay more when the school performance improves. The 1.8% premium this study attributes to a 1% increase in school performance is however generally low when compared to some findings in the literature suggesting that there may be some other important factors that households consider when purchasing their home.

The main contribution is uncovering the relationship between the SQ and residential property prices in the local markets, using Kensington and Observatory in Johannesburg as sampled areas. Due to the presence of reliable and quality of data sets, such studies are not many in the global south and a study of this nature in South Africa is notably not existing in the literature.

While the declining rate of urban security and its potential effects have been globally acknowledged, the ways urban neighborhood security shapes real estate markets in African cities remain largely unexplained. The purpose of this paper therefore is to present the findings from a study of the nexus between urban neighborhood security and home rental prices in Lagos, Nigeria.

This paper is based on the hedonic price theory, an objectively derived urban neighborhood security index (UNSI) and property rental price data in Ojo, Lagos, Nigeria. This is a quantitative cross-sectional study that employs multistage sampling survey procedure. Data are analyzed using descriptive statistics, nonparametric correlation and hedonic price function with ordinary least squares (OLS).

Results show that nearly 50% of the study area is prone to insecurity and average rental values in Ojo, Lagos range from N151329.41 ($302.66) to N167333.33 ($334.67) per annum. Correlation analysis shows that home rental prices have high, positive and significant correlations (rs = 0.725 and p < 0) with UNSI. After controlling for neighborhood and structural factors, it is found that urban neighborhood security positively influences home rental values as a unit improvement in security leads to N81000.00 ($162.00) increase in rental value per annum.

Urban neighborhood security risk threatens residential property values, creates unintended residential mobility and destabilizes families. Findings from this study point to the facts that security is a key component of urban housing values and developers, and real estate investors must ensure that this component is well factored into property design, construction and valuation.

This is perhaps the first study that uses an objectively derived UNSI to study home rental price dynamics in Nigeria. The study extends knowledge on urban housing price determinants and contributes to literature on the crucial place of security in property management.

Attempts to analyse the importance of transportation in determining house prices in Hong Kong. Residential property is sold as a package of inherent attributes that are valued by consumers and this analysis classifies them into the following categories: structural, physical and environmental. Specifically, these determinants of housing price include structural attributes such as size, age and floor level of the housing units; amenities such as accessibility to various means of transport; and factors determining the quality of the environment such as availability of recreational facilities. In this study, data were obtained from a large residential area in Hong Kong. Uses a Hedonic price model for estimating the importance of each of the defined utility‐bearing attributes on house prices.

This study is aimed to identify the attributes for a valuation approach of flood risk exposure, in particular for residential property. With frequent flood events in Malaysia, there is a need for valuation methods to evolve and represent the increased risk of natural disasters.

This study employed the Delphi method which is a systematic and interactive research technique in obtaining variables for a valuation approach for residential property exposed to flood risk.

Results from the Delphi method revealed four categories of attributes, namely environmental, locational, structural and economical.

The findings from this research will transform the valuation approach in Malaysia to identify the value of residential property exposed to flood risk. The determination of variables will represent the current risk in valuations, especially for residential property in flood-prone areas.

The elements of sales comparison for residential property depend on a package of inherent attributes that are valued by consumers. These attributes can be classified into the following categories: structural, physical, neighbourhood and environmental. A model that incorporates adjustments for floor area, age, views and amenities such as availability of recreational facilities is presented and discussed. A multiple regression analysis with transactions‐based data, using weighted least square to determine the discrete estate‐type induced price effect in the Hong Kong housing market, is also presented. The paper demonstrates how the view of negative housing attributes is capitalised into house prices. Specifically, it is shown that the residential property values are higher for estate‐type housing properties, and lower for dwelling units with a cemetery view.

The perception that the repetitive nature and attributes of mass housing projects (MHPs) induce significant influence on communication among projects teams have persistently been acknowledged without an empirical accentuation. This seemingly untested knowledge tends to limit the predictive accuracy of success and effectiveness of adopted communication style, strategies and models in mass housing particularly due to the incidence of the repetitive attributes. The purpose of this study is to delineate the influence of the repetitive attributes of mass housing projects on communication performance among the project team.

Through the use of questionnaire survey and structural equation modelling analysis, a hypothesized model tested evaluated the effects of the repetitive attributes of mass housing on information flow and information composition communication performance.

In the case of influence on information flow, it was seen to be substantial whereas that of the information composition was moderate.

The findings offer empirical credence to the existing perception and indeed affirm that the repetitive features of MHPs significantly contribute to communication performance related to information flow and information composition among the project team. The implication of these findings is that, practitioners and stakeholders on mass housing are urged to explore bespoke communication methods, medium, strategies and management approaches that fit the MHP attributes and environment to engender managerial and communication efficiencies in the delivery.