Development of price models for architectural and environmental quality for residential developments in Hong Kong

• Key architectural and environmental attributes affecting property price were identified.
• Willingness to pay (WTP) and elasticity of substitution (ES) of the key attributes were determined using the hedonic price approach.
• Homebuyers were found to be valuing the environmental attributes much higher than the architectural attributes.
• The WTP and ES values as well as the findings revealed in this study are valuable information to building developers and homebuyers.

Factors affecting a residential unit's price are always of interest to homebuyers and building developers, especially in a city like Hong Kong which is known for expensive housing. Literature review indicates that the governing factors can be categorized into architectural and environmental attributes. Among different methods commonly used for pricing, the hedonic price approach is viewed as the most suitable. However, the successful use of this method requires that homebuyers know and choose the attributes. Whilst choosing architectural attributes are not a problem for homebuyers, the same does not apply to environmental attributes. Previous studies by the authors have proposed some simple indicators for quantifying the environmental attributes. Based upon the developed performance indicators and the transaction records of two representative housing estates (Royal Ascot = RA and City One Shatin = COS), details of the properties, including transaction prices, architectural particulars and environmental characteristics were numerically transformed for the hedonic price analysis. The analysis results revealed that the willingness to pay (percentage of house price in parenthesis) for architectural and environmental attributes was HK$302.3/ft2 (5.8%) and HK$886.8/ft2 (28.2%), respectively, for RA and HK$1672.7/ft2 (31.9%) and HK$111.5/ft2 (3.5%) for COS. It was found that elasticity of substitution (ES) of environmental attributes contributed 3.4–13.3% of the property price, compared to 0.6–5.5% for architectural attributes.