Journal of Real Estate Research, The

Contract Incentives and Effort

In a prevailing employment contract the agent receives a proportional split of commissions. Alternatively, the agent receives a contract paying 100% of revenue above a fixed payment to the firm. In this contract the firm has a prior payment position, similar to a landlord or lender. The coexistence of these equity-only and debt-equity type contracts allows testing incentives for productivity and effort for real estate licensees in the United States. Hourly wages and productivity are increasin...

Decisions to Renovate and to Move

Housing renovation is the main alternative means of housing supply besides construction of new housing. Relatively little is known about the factors that affect decisions by households about whether to renovate and which sort of renovations to undertake. These questions are explored empirically. Separate analyses are conducted of the decision to undertake ''major structural renovations'' as opposed to other sorts (such as remodeling the kitchen or bathroom), and also of the decision to conduc...

On the Determinants of House Value Volatility

Few studies have analyzed the determinants of house value volatility at the level of individual houses. This paper uses two panels of the American Housing Survey covering 1974 to 2003 to test four hypotheses related to the determinants of house value volatility. The findings are that (1) house values at both ends of the quality distribution have greater variance than those with average quality levels, (2) the more atypical a house is, the greater the variance of house value, (3) the more high...

Using Quantile Regression in Hedonic Analysis to Reveal Submarket Competition

In this paper, we use quantile regression analysis to explore the role submarket competition plays in setting housing prices in those price ranges where different submarkets occupy homes of similar price. We find evidence of direct competition between submarkets with different preferences for at least some homes in a single neighborhood. By examining hedonic parameter instability at different housing price levels, we uncover not only latent diversity among homeowners but direct competition be...