Factors Affecting Residential Property Development Patterns

This article is the winner of the Real Estate Development manuscript prize (sponsored by the Urban Land Institute) presented at the 2002 American Real Estate Society Annual Meeting.This study uses a disaggregated data set, county property appraiser data, to track the number of new single-family housing units built in each section (square mile) of Alachua County, Florida by the year built over a twenty-year period. It explores the role of transportation, large-scale development, employment nodes, existing patterns of development and regulation on the spatial pattern of development. The results of the model suggest that the variables tested are important determinants of the growth pattern in Alachua County, but that much of the growth pattern is not explained by the explanatory variables employed in the model.