Property Values and Urban Amenities

An exploration of factors influencing property values in

Ahmedabad, India

In an urban area, the property values are a function of various physical, environmental and
psychological factors. In this study, we explored the relative contribution of each of these factors
on residential property values. One of the quantifiable attribute of these factors is proximity.
Proximity of these amenities to the particular properties has revealed a range of influence on its
property values. We further enquired the influence at two spatial scales – city level and
neighborhood level. The first, employs the distance to city centre, major transportation facilities,
land use and environment factors as the variables, and the second one, distance to city centre,
environmental factors, distance to nearest transport facility, road width and traffic congestion.

The correlation of these factors is highly varied. In the city level model, the contributions of the
factors are magnified after applying stepwise regression analysis in which variables are evaluated
specially for each model so that the contributions of the variables become comparable from
model to model. At city level, proximity to CBD, airport and BRT were insignificant in
predicting the property values. The factors with high significance are taken forward for
Geographically Weighted Regression (GWR) analysis in Geographical Information System (GIS)
to enhance the outcome spatially over the study area.

In the neighborhood level model, open spaces and the CBD were most significant, while newly
started BRT network was shown insignificant. Ordinary Least Square regression was carried out
on all the factors, in which the results of the correlation were reversed. So we abandoned the
study at the neighborhood level at this point and continued only the city level model.

The model is executed in the one of the fast developing cities of India, Ahmedabad. The results
are conclusive that the property values can be predicted using the physical amenities and
environmental factors. However, the dependant variable, property values is taken from the
Annual Statement of Rates (jantri), which is outdated and much underestimated the market value
of the properties. At the neighborhood level, in order to overcome this, we used the market values
as the dependant variable.

By Anuja Shrivastava Guide: Prof. Ajay K Katuri

HSG 0408