The Basel II framework strictly defines the conditions under which financial institutions are authorized to accept real estate as collateral in order to decrease their credit risk. A widely used concept for its valuation is the hedonic approach. It assumes, that a property can be characterized...

This paper analyzes house price data belonging to three hierarchical levels of spatial units. House selling prices with associated individual attributes (the elementary level-1) are grouped within municipalities (level-2), which form districts (level-3), which are themselves nested in counties...