The competitiveness of the residential real estate brokerage industry has attracted much attention. Anecdotal evidence suggests some local markets are concentrated, yet no systematic market structure study has been conducted. We collected cross‐sectional data on real estate brokers in 90 diverse markets across the United States and collected longitudinal data for Louisville, Kentucky. In medium and large markets, no evidence exists that market concentration might create problems for competition. Small markets, on average, have higher Herfindahl‐Hirschman Indexes than medium and large markets. The longitudinal data reveal that many small brokers sell a house or two one year and none the next year.
Study abroad experiences, relatively rare in chemistry programs and encouraged by the American Chemical Society, are a way to advance the cultural competence of students. We describe a study abroad experience that includes an upper level chemistry course on fermentation. Many articles have described the integration of fermentation into lecture and lab classes, providing instructors with resources for course development. The described course demonstrates several novel features: a model for the development of a study abroad experience, a strategy for increasing student enrollment, and a mechanism to ensure student engagement with the fermentation content before and during the study abroad trip.
<span style="font-family: Times New Roman; font-size: small;"> </span><p style="margin: 0in 0.5in 0pt; text-align: justify; mso-pagination: none;" class="MsoBodyText"><span style="font-size: 10pt;"><span style="font-family: Times New Roman;">This study applies a hedonic pricing model to the rapidly developing suburban housing market adjacent to the Savannah Historic Landmark District in the downtown area of Savannah, Georgia. Using OLS estimation, the hedonic pricing model yields results clearly tracing out the magnitude of the time-related housing price premium in the suburban market analyzed for the years from 2005 to 2010. The results also control for internal and external housing characteristics that are capitalized into the real sales prices of the housing transactions analyzed.</span></span></p><span style="font-family: Times New Roman; font-size: small;"> </span>
This paper adopts a hedonic pricing model to study the impact of vulnerability to inundation from sea level rise on home prices in Savannah, Georgia. We find that homes most at risk from sea level rise are associated with an approximate 3.1 percent price discount. The results are consistent with prior studies, which uses data from different locations in U.S. coastal areas. We also find that the discount is more significant in our later sample period, indicating that house buyers may be becoming more aware of the climate risk. This paper contributes to the understanding of house pricing factors in the study area regarding the sea level rise effects.
Abstract:The persistence of the standard six percent real estate sales commission across markets and over time calls into question the competitiveness of the residential real estate brokerage industry. While there is anecdotal evidence that some local real estate markets are fairly concentrated, no systematic study of market structures has been conducted. We have collected primary data on the number and market shares of real estate brokers in a variety of small, medium, and large real estate markets across the U.S. for 2007 and 2009. In addition to these cross sectional data, we have also collected longitudinal data on the size distribution of firms for Louisville, KY for a nine-year period. In our cross-sectional analysis of medium and large markets, we find no evidence that market concentration might create problems for competition. We do find that small markets on average have higher HHI's than medium and large markets. The longitudinal analysis reveals that many small brokers are in and out of the market, selling a house or two one year and selling zero houses the next year.
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