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Analyzing Mature Suburbs Through Property Values Author: Katrin B. Anacker Dissertation School: The Ohio State University Pages: 27 Publication Date: 3/2005 Availability: Access Number: 5019 Abstract: America can be characterized as the land of suburbs. According to the 2000 Census, suburban areas have more residents than either central cities or rural areas. The decline of America's downtowns and central cities has been lamented at least since the 1950s. Now, 50years later, this decline has reached beyond the central cities to some of the more mature suburban areas that had sprung up during the 20th century. It is possible that in future decades outer suburbs will be affected by the same phenomenon. In other words, people could continue moving out, nurturing sprawl. This is not in the public interest. America is a nation that has valued homeownership and investment in housing highly. Over time, property values tend to appreciate in most newer communities and in some older communities. However, communities that are about 50 to 60 years old have reached a point in the life of the housing units themselves that may create obstacles to price appreciation. Given the fact that every American city has mature suburbs, surprisingly little research about these mature suburbs has been published. Will mature suburbs face the fate of many central city neighborhoods and see price depreciation? What factors cause price depreciation and why? Will it be possible to keep residents from leaving the mature suburbs or will it be possible to even attract new residents who can not only afford but are also willing to maintain these homes? One of the objectives of this research is to develop a conceptual model of suburban areas that allows for a more refined distinction between different types of suburbs. One such indicator variable could be house prices. A second objective is to study the mature inner suburbs and their role in the changing relationships among the central cities and the inner and outer suburbs. The study will examine the influence of structural components and public services and amenities in different types of mature suburbs. I will back up my research by conducting expert interviews in and field trips to the three study sites in Ohio: Cleveland, Columbus, and Cincinnati. Here I will conduct expert interviews with planners, public policy analysts, and other officials. These experts have implicit knowledge that is not codified but is needed to have a solid basis for the statistical analysis. Hedonic price models have allowed researchers to explore the relationship between property values and different attributes of the property, in particular, public services and amenities and location. Whereas many hedonic analyses have been undertaken in the past, they have not focused on mature suburbs specifically. Also, past efforts have not taken into account the fact that combining data on the individual level (for example, housing unit attributes) with data on the aggregate level (for example, neighborhood attributes) in regression models will lead to results that are statistically biased. I will address this problem by using a so-called hierarchical linear model that corrects for the different levels. This model is at the current research frontier in statistics. |
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