In financial markets, speculation is justified by its contribution to liquidity, hedging, and, if rationally done, for adjusting price to value. Derivatives are essential to turn speculation into an element that contributes an efficient market. Property assets have the distinctive feature of being, residential and productive assets, and, investment assets. This paper studies how speculation may have a positive contribution to the real estate market by regarding it from the triple perspective of property, primitive financial assets, and derivatives. We approach an answer by trying to identify which assets are needed to this end and how they can contribute to guide speculation to efficiency. On this basis, we examine the development of the derivatives on real estate indexes and the perspectives of their future evolution, including their impact on the real market.

Econometric models have produced contradictory results and have failed to provide warning of housing market crashes. The article should illustrate the inability of econometrics to reliably predict the last house price bubble and detect the disequilibrium in the housing markets. The authors will demonstrate on particular situation that two distinct but well specified econometric models can lead to different outcomes. The authors argue that the demand for housing is influenced by social constructs, social norms, ideologies, unrealistic expectations, symbolic patterns, and the actual choice of housing is the outcome of complex social interactions with reference groups. Consequently, it is necessary to analyse the potential instability of social constructs, norms, expectations and the changing character of social interactions to better understand purchasing behaviour and, then, house price volatility.

Sustainable urban development requires education of professionals dealing with the built environment. Property valuers constitute one such important albeit neglected actor group. When the aim is to comprehend value and valuation, the questions to ask include the following argumentation: What is the ideal definition of sustainable development in a valuation context? Is it about the diversity of value systems? Or about long-term thinking in terms of reinvesting the profits harvested? And what is the role of generating data on these factors? The paper reports some suggestions for answering these questions in a residential context.