Exploring Spatial Effects on Urban Housing Duration

The decision to buy or sell a dwelling is complex. As such, researchers have considered models of housing price, location choice, and other dimensions of the problem. However, one potentially overlooked aspect of the decision to buy or sell a home concerns the spatial characteristics associated with the property itself. To this end, the authors utilize the Cox proportional hazards approach to model housing duration as a function of spatial and property-specific variables. They incorporate exogenous spatial variables into their model by using GIS-based spatial modeling. They find that spatial factors, such as commuting time zones, as well as aspatial characteristics, such as equity constraints, are important for explaining housing turnover. Moreover, the applicability of the Cox proportional hazard model to the spatial analysis of housing duration is demonstrated.