Sorting in an urban housing market - is there a response to demographic change?
Using Dortmund as a case study we analyse whether rents and housing prices responded to local demographic change in a German city between 2007 and 2016. In a two-step analysis based on a spatial autoregressive hedonic pricing model and a discrete choice model of housing location we find that during the study period as a whole, higher local mortality induced a negative effect on apartment prices and rents. Yet, the neighbourhood effects of local ageing vary across sub-city districts. Most prominently, the study period was characterised by a strong and rising desire to purchase or rent housing in the vicinity of the city centre. Furthermore, prices for owner-occupied apartments and houses increased rapidly in the more well-off southern part of the city and particularly in a previously declining community, where a large-scale urban regeneration and environmental upgrading project has been implemented since 2011. The characteristics of households likely to move to this neighbourhood switched from low to high income.
Neumann, U. and L. Taruttis (2022), Sorting in an urban housing market - is there a response to demographic change?. Review of Regional Research, 42, 2, 111-139