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The sustainability agenda has already become widely recognised in real estate analysis. However, two challenges are to overcome before sustainability issues are brought fully into the professional and academic mainstream: first, the provision of sustainability enhancing qualities; and second, to overcome deep-rooted scepticism towards the higher cost element of such qualities (i.e. creating economies of scale). Another potentially related issue is that the notion of innovation is gaining popularity in this field. Innovation-driven change is cyclical and unpredictable, which in turn calls for an explicit evolutionary and complexity perspective. The paper aims to discuss these issues.

Critical literature review. The author’s own experience as participant of the discussions and debates is also used.

The conclusions suggest that, in line with evolutionary and complexity principles, innovations exist and emerge within the real estate industry itself, and in fields related to it – and this includes various aspects of promoting sustainability thinking.

This contribution uses valuation automata as an example of this argumentation.

The concept of complexity refers to emerging qualities found in the evolution of the development of an industry; the practical implication of complexity concerns the capability of managers to react competently in unfamiliar circumstances.

Thus, innovation in real estate is both economic and socio-cultural.

No similar (i.e. theoretically informed) papers on innovation or sustainability in real estate analysis have been written to the best of the author’s knowledge.

It is well‐known from the literature that locational externalities influence the price formation of residential property. This effect is usually studied empirically with the hedonic price models, by including various neighbourhood and proximity variables in the model. These regression based techniques have, however, been criticised for a number of reasons. The arguments pertain partly to technical issues such as model flexibility, functional discontinuity and nonlinearity, and data quality, and partly to more fundamental problems regarding the nature of the value formation process. The criticism has attracted experiments with new modelling approaches, each of which adds something substantial to the hedonic approach. The study comprises two parts: it first highlights the rationale behind each broad approach composed of specific modelling techniques currently available, and then demonstrates an improvement of the demand side analysis by applying the analytic hierarchy process. This method enables quantification of qualitative expert judgements, and may lead to conclusions that go beyond the purely economic value framework.

Valuation is a professional activity based on international and local standards. In the valuation process more than one method can be modified. In this case, a final reconciliation of different opinions of value may be required. It is a matter of fact that the final result of these different valuation methods may vary. Therefore, in the final part of the valuation process, the valuer is required to assign a weight to the different methodologies to reach an appropriate opinion of value. This process is essentially based on valuer’s expertise. This paper aims to propose an automatic procedure of calculating the weights to assist the valuer in the valuation process.

The work provides methodologies to assign the weights through simple mathematical procedures that can be used to support subjective judgement in the valuation process. The models proposed can be applied to other phases of reconciliation inside the valuation process and are based on the collection of previous property data in the same market segment.

Two different methodologies are proposed to support valuers in the valuation process and in particular in the phase of the choice of the weights for final reconciliation purposes.

The implication is the development of an information system to support the appraiser in providing these weights. The models proposed are only two but represent a future, much larger field of research.

The models may help in determining more consistent valuation reports.

Consistent valuation reports for the determination of mortgage lending value may contribute to the stability of the social and economic system, especially after the 2008 non-agency mortgage crisis.

These are original models proposed in literature for such kind of problems.

This chapter focusses on multi-local families and more specifically on the ways in which children of separated parents, living in joint physical custody arrangements, define and construct their ‘home’ in a context of circular mobility. It is based on two case studies drawn from ongoing fieldwork conducted in Belgium with children aged 10–16 in the context of the ERC Starting Grant project ‘MobileKids’. The main aim is to understand how family relations structure children’s ‘life spaces’ and ‘lived space’ (di Meo, 2012). The authors explore in particular the meanings and feelings that family relations confer to the space of the ‘house’ in children’s experiences, including both the physicality of the place of residence, and the relations and emotions that children attach to it (Forsberg, Autonen-Vaaraniemi, & Kauko, 2016, p. 435). The authors also highlight the various strategies that children develop to mediate/influence their family relations through ‘space’, including strategies of spatial appropriation and territorialisation. The authors conclude by summarising the main findings and considering future developments.

Accounting for locational effects in determining price is of fundamental importance. The demise of the mainstream property market has culminated in increasing appetite and investment activity within the private rental sector. The primary purpose of this paper aims to analyse the local variation and spatial heterogeneity in residential rental prices in a large urban market in the UK using various geo-statistical approaches.

Applying achieved price data derived from a leading internet-based rental agency for Belfast Northern Ireland is analysed in a number of spatially based modelling frameworks encompassing more traditional approaches such as hedonic regressive models to more complex spatial filtering methods to estimate rental values as a function of the properties implicit characteristics and spatial measures.

The principal findings show the efficacy of the geographically weighted regression (GWR) technique as it provides increased accuracy in predicting marginal price estimates relative to other spatial techniques. The results reveal complex spatial non-stationarity across the Belfast metropole emphasizing the premise of location in determining and understanding rental market performance. A key finding emanating from the research is that the high level of segmentation across localised pockets of the Belfast market, as a consequence of socio-political conflict and ethno-religious territoriality segregation, requires further analytical insight and model specification in order to understand the exogenous spatial and societal effects/implications for rental value.

This study is one of only a few investigations of spatial residential rent price variation applying the GWR methodology, spatial filtering and other spatial techniques within the confines of a UK housing market. In the context of residential rent prices, the research highlights that a soft segmentation modelling approaches are essential for understanding rental gradients in a polarised ethnocratic city.