We study the external effects of large-scale conventional and renewable electric power generation facilities on local house prices. We compare coal, gas, biomass and wind power, combining information on all power plants and wind turbines in the Netherlands with house price data from 2.3 million...

This paper analyzes how the dynamics of house prices are affected by the option to rebuild or enlarge existing dwellings. The curvature of option value and zoning limits provide identification of changes in option value over the cycle. For West Berlin homes with high development potential, our...

This paper contributes to the discussion whether changes in house prices can be explained by fundamental factors or trends. Using a long-term time series covering 350 years of house prices along the Herengracht in Amsterdam, we examine whether a fundamental factor or a trend explains house...

We evaluate the economics of financial intermediation in alternative assets by investigating the allocation and performance of pension fund investments in real estate, the most significant alternative asset class for institutional investors. We document substantial heterogeneity in real estate...

This paper examines the long run relation between prices and rents for houses in Amsterdam from 1650 through 2005. We first demonstrate that these series are cointegrated, a necessary condition for studying movements of the rent-price ratio. We then estimate the deviation of house prices from...

The paper investigates the long run historic development of the Amsterdam rental housing market (1550-1850). Using rent data on a large cross section of residential properties in Amsterdam we are able to develop an annual constant-quality rent index for the entire time period. Whereas nominal...

We estimate total returns to rental housing by studying over 170,000 hand-collected archival observations of prices and rents for individual houses in Paris (1809-1943) and Amsterdam (1900-1979). The annualized real total return, net of costs and taxes, is 4.0% for Paris and 4.8% for Amsterdam,...

Comparing banks to non-bank lenders, we investigate whether the geographical distance between lenders, borrowers and their properties is reflected in the pricing of US mortgages that were included in US CMBS pools during the 2000 to 2017 period. The difference in loan spread when bank-borrower...

In this paper I introduce a biennial historic index of real estate values for the period 1628 through 1973. This index is based on the transactions of the buildings on the Herengracht, one of the canals in Amsterdam. Since its development, the quality of the buildings on this canal has been on a...