Volume 21 (2013): Issue 4 (December 2013)

Municipal spatial planning is one of the key elements of a national spatial policy and the local land use plan is the most important tool for shaping this policy. The local land use plan, as opposed to the study, is a provision of the local law. The study, however, is mandatory for the whole area of the municipality, while the local land use plan is, in principle, voluntary and subject to certain exceptions.

One of the elements which ought to be included in the spatial policy a municipality is taking into account the threats to the safety of its inhabitants and their property, as well as identifying areas of natural geological hazards. Therefore, both the study and the local land use plan of the municipality should include, among others, areas of particular risk related to the subsidence of soil masses, i.e., landslide areas. Landslide areas are of a limited use for investment purposes, including residential, industrial or service development, as particularly vulnerable to the phenomenon of rock masses, eluvium or sediments sliding down slopes under the force of gravity.

The purpose of this article is to analyze the legal and economic consequences resulting from changes to the local land use plan, related to the qualification of an area as a landslide area. This paper examines the changes to the local land use plan for the town of Wieliczka, located place on the border of the Outer Carpathians and the Carpathian Foredeep. The transition from a mountainous terrain into a plane gives rise to numerous natural forms of relief which are prone to landslides. The study of landslides in the municipality of Wieliczka conducted in 2008, resulted in changing the qualifications of many areas to areas at risk of soil subsidence. The effects of the study have been reflected in the new local land use plan introduced in 2010.

Public real estate management is a complicated process which depends on many factors. Post-socialist countries are characterized by different ways of public real estate management. This is caused, inter alia, by the specifics of a particular country, its history, politics, the way in which public real estate is interpreted, or the amount of public resources.

The paper presents the classification of the public real estate management systems in terms of the applied procedures. Analyses were made on the basis of the authors’ own studies and indicators proposed by international organizations, such as the World Bank and World Economic Forum. Extremely helpful advice was also obtained from the participants of the international seminar on State and Public Sector Land Management in Transition Countries, which was organized in September 2012 in Budapest by Commission 7 of the International Federation of Surveyors (FIG) and the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO).

Property valuation is characterized by uncertainty, understood not only as uncertainty of a single valuation, but also as a discrepancy between multiple valuations of the same property carried out at the same time and for the same purpose. A valuation is only an estimate, the outcome of which depends on the assumptions adopted by the valuer. Such assumptions may account for the potential of a property in a complex market environment in different ways.

The objective of the paper is to present the methodology of research devoted to valuation uncertainty in highly developed markets to emphasize the need to conduct such research in Poland, and to indicate the areas in which professional organizations should undertake actions.

Effective local housing policies require integrated and flexible ways of managing the resources of social, council and social building society flats. The paper presents a systemic concept of relocating tenants within the local housing resources to premises of a different type. The concept is based on the proposal to rent the flats to the tenants on a temporary basis. Such a solution leads to more efficient housing resource utilization as well as making the housing policy in Poland more rational at times of a housing deficit. Empirical research has proved that the existing legal regulations reduce the scale of tenant transfers in Olsztyn and the concept of creating "a chain of voluntary transfers" has not been, in fact, implemented.

Valuation for loan security purposes has been a key issue related to property valuation, financial markets and the economy in general. This paper attempts to demonstrate the main reasons for interest in this field by referring to the situation in Poland and the United Kingdom. Moreover, the conditions of valuation for loan security purposes in Europe have been outlined, as well as the new challenges that property valuers have to face. Questions regarding unified and harmonious valuation standards have been presented in relation to international, European and domestic professional standards and legal regulations. The conclusion addresses further challenges of property valuation that must be tackled urgently, because valuation results are strictly connected with the profitability and safety of investments in the property market. Furthermore, the paper emphasizes that uncertainty in the valuation process also needs to be taken into account, as the appraised properties secure loans given by institutions funding their development.

The author endeavoured to define profiles and preferences of buyers on the primary housing market in Poznań. To achieve this aim, the author used data obtained from notarial deeds concerning transactions entered into on the primary housing market in Poznań in the period 2010-2011.

The study was conducted among the biggest groups of buyers (i.e., women, men and married couples - 90% of those analyzed). The number of transactions encompassed in the study amounted to 1,648 (after selection and rejection of transactions with an incomplete description, e.g., incomplete information in the land register).

Rating systems developed in Poland and other countries are generally used to evaluate the performance of businesses, organizations, institutions and even entire economies. Comprehensive solutions for assessing real estate markets and individual properties have never been proposed (several systems for evaluating mostly commercial real estate have been developed). This deficiency could be attributed to an absence of databases describing the real estate market and market changes as well as a shortage of coherent methods for analyzing real estate markets. In most cases, however, market phenomena may be difficult to classify because they involve behavioral, social and stochastic elements.

This article analyzes the existing systems for rating and ranking markets in different Polish regions and cities. They were compared with information about the classification of real estate markets on the example of selected property markets in Poland. Selected categories were evaluated to determine whether rating methods for real estate markets, including housing markets, should be developed for different Polish cities and regions. The growth potential of local real estate markets was also analyzed.

This paper presents the principles of studying global spatial autocorrelation in the land property market, as well as the possibilities of using these regularities for the construction of spatial regression models. Research work consisted primarily of testing the structure of the spatial weights matrix using different criteria and conducting diagnostic tests of two types of models: the spatial error model and the spatial lag model.

The paper formulates the hypothesis that the application of spatial regression models greatly increases the accuracy of transaction price prediction while forming the basis for the creation of cartographic documents including, among others, maps of land value.

The real estate market is a domain of multi-faceted contemplations - ranging from economical, societal and sociological, to juridical aspects. These domains are important because they create an area of real estate (internal and external) and have an impact on the real estate market.

The multifariousness of properties has an influence on the creation of market values. Investors and people whose jobs are connected with the real estate market describe it using points, variables and characteristic attributes and on their basis, create algorithms or real estate market models. We need to draw attention to the fact that, in most cases, the terms “features “, “variables”, and “attributes” are treated as the same. The authors of the present article do not agree with that kind of approach and would like to systematize the knowledge in this area. The goal of the article is to explain problematic terms, and indicate their genesis and sense of using them.

The paper compares the legal systems of property valuation in three different countries. It describes their different valuation procedures and provides commentary on them.

The real estate market poses a topic of research in the theoretical sense, as well as encouraging researchers to search for new methods/tools/platforms which would help to understand, manage and undertake all kinds of activities (decisions) within its realm. The process of globalization, need to constantly gather information (create extensive registers), data management, implementation of complicated computing procedures (which only seemingly provide solutions), and awareness and knowledge of market participants are supposed to lead us to "ultimately understand" the structures of the real estate market. However, in most cases, the decisions made in the real estate market realm are not rational.

Market participants do not always act accordingly to the (economic) presumptions of the market and many of their behaviors can easily be viewed as chaotic and impulsive. Owing to this fact, it seems justified to invoke mathematical and physical concepts, and apply them to the real estate market.

This article describes the concept of how the real estate market is perceived according to the phase space theory. Phase space is understood as a multidimensional space of market events where the transfer of rights to real estate takes place and decision-making processes occur. Transaction prices, on the other hand, indicate market development and are an emanation of decision-making processes.

The goal of this article is to provide proof for the hypothesis that the real estate market is a system existing in multidimensional phase space and that the complexity of this space affects the unit price of real estate.

Markets of any goods, like the whole economy, are subject to fluctuations, which are usually determined by the economic situation. Fluctuations of different strength affect all markets, including that of real estate. Studies conducted in other countries show that the number of transactions and the price of apartments on the housing market tend to increase in the spring and summer rather than in autumn and winter. In this paper, an attempt was made to verify this relation in Polish conditions using examples of several cities in the period of 1996-2012.