An elderly is akin to a family treasure : do historic buildings have premium over other buildings in Hong Kong?

Abstract

It is known that in the Hong Kong property market, historic buildings are often facing the threat of being redeveloped by property developers and investors. This dissertation serves as one of the first attempts to build a communication platform for property investors and conservation practitioners to have mutual understanding on the value of cultural significance of historic buildings in Hong Kong. Hedonic valuation model and stated preference method have been used in this study to investigate the relationship and significance between the various property attributes, in particular cultural significance and the transaction prices of historic buildings. The cultural significance factor is statistically significant in one property pool but insignificant in another. Both pools found that the more heritage value is associated with the property, the lower the property price is. This might due to the possible limitations for redevelopment faced by potential buyers. This study serves as an attempt to build a valuation model and is subject to a few limitations, such as a limited number of property transactions available for analysis and the limited resources to conduct cultural research on the buildings. Future studies could improve the discrepancies of this study and expand the geographical region of the historic valuation model in other places in Hong Kong and Asia such as Macau and Singapore.