Estimation of Hedonic Housing Price Function For Ahvaz using Panel Data Analysis

The most important issue concerning housing supply is that how people rank different attributes of a House. This evaluation can be measured by estimating housing price function. In order to examine the consumer’s evaluation, a hedonic price model has been applied using the panel data model including the cross section observations on five municipality regions of the city of Ahvaz over years 1997-2003. The goal of this research is to determine the leading physical and environmental factor affecting the housing price in Ahvaz. To this end two panel data unit root tests and two cointegration tests for panel data as well as GLS estimation method have been conducted. The estimation has been carried out separately for three kinds of houses: Apartment, villa and others types.The empirical results reveal that the physical factors are the most important determinants of the demand for housing attributes and have the most effect on housing price as a whole. The environmental attributes take second place. The same is true for apartment, but it is just the reveres for villa. Being close to a street with a width of 4-10 meters is among the most important attributes affecting housing price in these two kinds of houses.