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Beauty in the Eye of the Home-Owner: Aesthetic Zoning and Residential Property Values

Accepted version
Peer-reviewed

Type

Article

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Authors

Abstract

This article empirically confirms one core motivation for architectural zoning: Shape homogeneity among neighboring homes increases the value of residential buildings. Drawing on large-scale shape and transaction data, this study first develops a data-driven measure of architectural similarity, condensing three-dimensional shapes to univariate shape distributions. These algorithm-based similarity estimates are good predictors of human perceptions of shape similarity and are linked to property attributes and transaction prices. For the city of Rotterdam, a price premium of approximately 3.5% is estimated for row houses within very homogeneous ensembles over buildings facing heterogeneous neighbors.

Description

Keywords

38 Economics, 3801 Applied Economics, Clinical Research

Journal Title

Real Estate Economics

Conference Name

Journal ISSN

1080-8620
1540-6229

Volume Title

48

Publisher

Wiley-Blackwell