Impact of Location and Dwelling Characteristics on Residential Property Prices/Values: A Critical Review of Literature

Abstract

 It is a common knowledge that dwelling characteristics and the influence of locatonal externalities are critical to the formation of residential property prices. The physical and structural attributes of dwellings such as the age of building, quality of design, size of rooms, number of rooms, number of toilets and bathrooms, quality of constructional materials and the layout plan of dwellings impact positively or negatively on house prices. Similarly, the attributes of residential location such as the proximity to place of employment, to shopping centers, markets, accessibility to public transport and sporting facilities are among major factors that determine house prices. The purpose of this paper is to undertake a critically review of empirical literature on the impact of location and dwelling characteristics on residential property values. Documentary data with regards to the study were obtained from various secondary sources and were studied and reviewed accordingly. Findings of this study revealed that various studies on the impact of location and dwelling characteristics on residential property values/prices indicated that both the location and dwelling characteristics are major determinants of residential property value. However, approaches adopted in selecting sampling size in most of the studies were not clearly defined. The suggest that appropriate methods of sample size selection adopted for a given study should be clearly defined

Keywords: Location, Dwellings, Characteristics, Impact, Residential property value/price