THE DETERMINANTS OF CONDOMINIUM PRICES WITH THE CONSIDERATION OF ORIENTATION VIEW, FLOOR LEVEL AND NUMBERING

Abstract

The presence of the effect of feng shui and eastern beliefs like Chinese numerology on property values has long been a controversy amongst people. This research study seeks to analyse the impact of orientation, view, floor level and auspicious sounding numbers on the residential property price for condominiums in Singapore. This empirical research is based on the first-time transacted sale prices of 5,105 condominium units from Year 2000 to 2005. The concentration of this study is the sale transaction price between developers and house buyers based on caveat information. The data is analysed using hedonic pricing model estimated by multiple linear regressions. The findings indicate that condominium units located on a higher floor levels command a 4.8% premium and units with a pool view from the living hall window are sold at a 4.2% premium. Conversely, units with their living halls and/or bedrooms facing the West sun are sold at a discount of 3.2%. Lastly, units with auspicious sounding unit numbers 8 and 9 are sold at a premium of 5.1% and 1.8% respectively. Whilst the units with number 4 are not considered unlucky as their sale price is unaffected, numbers 3 and 7 may be considered unlucky thus sold at a discount of 2.6% and 5.2% respectively. And, lucky floor levels proved insignificant in this study. Overall, these results will provide noteworthy and valuable insights for the theory and the practice of real estate development, investment, appraisal, valuation and marketing.