The significance of informal land registration in property transactions and development has been discussed at length, but there are few examples of in-depth case studies of how this information accessing and collection institution relates to them and how it may create property rights. This paper...

This study examines how heterogeneous traders on both sides of transactions behave in the housing market under information asymmetry. Two types of buyers, namely, informed and uninformed buyers, correspond to local and non-local buyers in the empirical tests. Non-local housing buyers in Hong...

Presale, or selling before completion, is a very common phenomenon in the housing market. However, not all developers presell their units and the proportion of units presold varies over time and across projects. This study examines the factors that affect developers' decisions to presell their...

In timing property listings, real estate developers can exercise the “option to wait” or “option to presale” to mitigate price uncertainty risk. In this study, we proposed a theoretical model to study the effectiveness of both strategies under a unified framework. We tested our model...

Site safety is one critical factor affecting the sustainability of skyscrapers and decoration, repair, and maintenance projects. Many newly-built skyscrapers exceed 50 storeys in Hong Kong and decoration, repair, and maintenance projects are widely performed to extend the lifespans of buildings....

This paper tests for the effects of financial constraints on open-bid English land auction prices and bids. It is argued that bidders' ability to pay, taken as capital resources and/or capital budget constraints, influence bids and final auction prices. While high capital resource developers may...

Presale, or selling before completion, is a very common phenomenon in the housing market. However, not all developers presell their units and the proportion of units presold varies over time and across projects. This study examines the factors that affect developers' decisions to presell their...

Under information asymmetry, lemons tend to be overpriced. Yet, how much overpricing premium the lemons can command is contingent on the underlying legal institutions. A set of transaction data from Hong Kong's housing market reveals that durable lemons are overpriced by 6.7% and 9.9% under the...

Delays in obtaining development approvals have been advanced as a major reason for shortages if not also increase in cost of housing. This paper is the first systematic attempt to examine whether the apparently long period of time taken to obtaining statutory planning permissions by developers...

A state monopoly over a scarce natural resource under open access can arguably reduce the costs of supply by constraining rent dissipation. A monopoly over the collection and trading of sand was formed in Hong Kong by legislation in 1935 in the wake of disputes between sandmen and villagers and...