Editorial

• Date: 16 January 2025
• Pages: 1-4
• DOI: https://doi.org/10.1108/IJHMA-12-2024-194
• Published date: 16 January 2025
• Subject Matter: Property management & built environment,Real estate & property,Housing markets
• Author: Richard Reed

Editorial

Welcome to the f‌irst issue in the eighteenth volume of the International Journal of Housing

Markets and Analysis. All 14 papers in this issue have been passed through a rigorous

double-blind referee process and therefore these papers provide cutting-edge research into

pertinent housing market issues.Most importantly these diverse papers are accompanied by

a broad range of research objectives,methodologies and f‌indings which align with the unique

aims and scope of this journal.

The f‌irst paper investigates the relationship between tourism development and urban

housing prices in China. In particular this study examines whether there is a relationship

between the two variables in tourist cities and non-tourist cities. In the methodology the

entropy method was used to construct the China City Tourism Development Index which

provided a comprehensive measure of the level of tourism development in 45 major cities.

The f‌indings conf‌irmed that tourism development affects urban house prices and there is an

inverted U-shaped relationship. However this relationship varies across cities with house

prices in tourist cities tending to be inf‌luenced more by tourism development than in non-

tourist cities. In addition the level of foreign direct investment as well as population size,

f‌ixed asset investment and disposable income per capita had an impact on house prices in

both tourism and non-tourismcities.

The second paper from Japan studies the relationship between market share and rent

levels to understand the supply structure in the private rental housing market. The

methodology is designed to calculate the municipal-level market share of a dominantrental

housing operator in this country. The data set includes the overall market rent and the

dominant operator’s rent premium at the municipal level by accessing a major web portal’s

listing data of rental houses. There are two main outcomes being that (a) as market share

increased the level of overall market rent tended to decrease and (b) when analysed by

market share there is no signif‌icant differencebetween the rent of the dominant operator and

the overall market rent. The f‌indingssuggest that dominant operators may have lowered the

rent of their own property to prioritisef‌illing vacancies, however this causes the overall level

of market rent to decline. This supports a rental housing operators’strategy to maximise

long-term rental income under sublease contracts with individual owners, which therefore

ensures stable rentalincome for owners regardless of the occupation statusof the apartments.

The third paper examines the dynamic impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic and

government policy on real house price indices in f‌ive emerging economies, namely Brazil,

China, Thailand, Turkey and South Africa. The methodology uses the local projection

method based on panel data relating to these countries. The results found the number of

COVID-19 conf‌irmed positive cases increased housing prices whereas government

containment measures decreased housing prices. Both conventional and unconventional

monetary policy implemented by central banks to assist with addressing COVID-19

contributed to increased housing prices. These effects were strengthened by the U.S.

monetary policy via globalisedf‌inancial markets.

The fourth paper investigatesthe effects of school quality on residential property prices in

South Africa. Previous studies have examined the quality of private and public schools

without a standard proxy, however this paper contributes to the literature by examining the

effect that school quality has on residential property price changes in local markets in

Johannesburg. The methodologyuses the hedonic pricing model to evaluate and quantify the

impact that the structural attributes such as erf size, number of bedrooms and bathrooms as

International

Journal of

Housing Markets

and Analysis

1

InternationalJournal of Housing

Marketsand Analysis

Vol.18 No. 1, 2025

pp. 1-4

© Emerald Publishing Limited

1753-8270

DOI 10.1108/IJHMA-12-2024-194