Providing adequate housing at affordable prices remains a challenge for all welfare states. As part of a pilot project for developing a common methodology for reference budgets in the European Union, reference rents and other housing costs (energy, taxes, maintenance) corresponding to adequate dwellings for four hypothetical households living in nine capital regions of the EU were estimated. In this paper, we discuss the approach that we have taken. Quality criteria for adequate housing were derived from EU indicators of housing deprivation, and the recent UK Housing Standards Review. We used data from the Study of Income and Living Conditions (EU-SILC) of 2012. Unsurprisingly, the estimates of reference rents vary strongly across capitals, reflecting cross-national differences in the level of the average rent. By contrast, other housing costs, which mainly reflect energy costs, vary much less.

This paper explored the effects of housing prices on income inequality in China. By using China''s inter-provincial panel data from 1995 to 2011, we find that both housing prices and long-term mortgage rates are associated with the Gini coefficient of the income of urban residents, and the coefficients of correlation are significant positive. Moreover, a series of housing price control policies promulgated by the Chinese government has worsened the situation and has caused considerable interaction effects on long-term mortgage rates since 2003.

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.