Real estate market and the relevance of local features in a hedonic prices quantil-spatial analysis – the case of Belo Horizonte – Brazil

The main motivation of this paper is to identify how relevant the localization of a specific estate is in its market value. Furthermore, it aims to understand better how economic aspects influence and are influenced by urban space. In order to do so, a myriad of concepts is drawn from a variety of fields of science: from geography to architecture, from urbanism to economics, as well as methodologies, which are borrowed from statistics, econometrics and geoprocessing. The proposal of the paper follows the hedonic prices function literature, but suggests that a synthesis of the perception of urban amenities can be expressed by the element of the neighbourhood (as proposed by Lynch, 1997). A number of models are presented, tested and commented. The one with the best fit is the spatial error-lag (Anselin, 1988) specified with a ranking of neighbourhood income. A quantil analysis adds considerably to the understanding of the model.