COOLING MEASURES AND THE GREEN HOUSING MARKET DYNAMICS

Abstract

Today, urbanity permeates most of the developed world, signifying promises of a better life. In reality, the built environment is a key contributor of climate change bearing high economic costs while threatening to disrupt and end the menial everyday lives. A notable solution is the green buildings, an optimistic opportunity to reduce carbon emission. But there is an existing literature gap on policy effects on the green residential market dynamics as compared to the non-green market. Given higher green premiums and comfortable living environments, green buildings may have lower turnover rates, which suggest that in negative demand shocks, green buildings may establish a stable market outcome. The paper addresses the literature gap as an exploratory study investigating this presumption “whether PIDS-related policies have a differentiated effect on the green over the non-green private non-landed residential market”. In Singapore, Policy-Induced Demand Shocks (PIDS) are caused by cooling measures that targets demand like the ABSD and sometimes, LTV limits. The research design probes transacted prices and holding periods via a Hedonic Pricing and Flexible Parametric Hazard models respectively within the new sale and resale markets.

The findings demonstrate that green projects are able to ensure a stable housing market of lower turnover rates and price stability driven by economic fundamentals with minimal policy strength than non-green projects. After a PIDS, the green new sale residential market experiences a reduced green premium and shorter holding periods than the non-green market. Stronger policies incite larger green premiums and longer holding periods than previous rounds in the green new sale market. Within the resale market, the green market after a PIDS experiences larger green premiums and longer holding periods, which when accompanying stronger policies, grows in larger magnitudes compared to previous rounds. Thus, given their socio-economic and environmental benefits and stable market outcomes, the authorities should identify actions to encourage green building developments in Singapore.