This study aims to improve our understanding of the determinants of land values in large cities. We use two methods to recover land values. First, we rely on so-called teardown sales, which occur when a buyer purchases a property intending to demolish the existing structure and rebuild. As...

Most analyses of the determinants of land prices in urban areas make inferences from data on housing transactions which combine payments for land and long-lived improvements. In contrast, this study utilizes a large sample of market transactions on unimproved land in a major US metropolitan area...

A house is a bundle of land and improvements, with the weights of the two components varying both over time and across locations. We capture the land intensity or leverage of a property by measuring the ratio of land to total value. This is accomplished using transactions data for single-family...

The renovation and expansion of existing commercial properties constitute important investments into the economic infrastructure. Such investments can facilitate economic growth if made at appropriate times and scales, but can also lead to a waste of economic resources and exacerbate market...

Accurate calculation of economic depreciation is essential for developing estimates of capital income, and stocks, and, by extension, for developing tax policy and financial accounting procedures. Accurate depreciation values are also necessary in empirical studies of economic growth and capital...

This study examines the heterogeneous appraiser behavior and its implication on the traditional appraisal smoothing theory. We show that the partial adjustment model is consistent with the traditional appraisal smoothing argument (Geltner 1989) only when all the appraisers choose the same...