I recently attended the 2008 American Real Estate Society (ARES) Conference in Captiva Island, Florida.  ARES is a group aimed at bringing together real estate academics and practitioners from across the nation to share research ideas and, to a lesser extent, teaching strategies.  Obviously, discussion often turned to the subprime mortgage meltdown at the conference this year.  In addition, research papers were presented on a wide variety of real estate-related topics, including residential and commercial property valuation, REITs, and sustainable design, to name a few.

ARES publishes a number of journals that include studies on the types of topics mentioned above, among many others.  Information on the Journal of Real Estate Research, the Journal of Real Estate Portfolio Management, the Journal of Real Estate Practice and Education, the Journal of Housing Research, and the Journal of Real Estate Literature, along with information about ARES itself, can be found at the organization website.

The research paper that I presented at the conference was aimed at uncovering how neighborhood amenities impact residential valuation.  The amenities considered included pools, tennis courts, neighborhood clubhouses, golf courses, play parks, and boating facilities.  Preliminary results indicate that, for existing homes over the sample period studied, play parks, clubhouses, and boating facilities increase property values significantly.  However, for newly constructed homes, tennis courts, clubhouses, and boating facilities increase property values, while golf courses actually decrease property values.  The study also notes that there seem to be some amenity groupings that add more to residential property values than do others.

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Justin Benefield  is a Professor with the College of Charleston’s School of Business and Finance.  He holds a Ph.D. in Finance, and is a licensed agent through our office.