Analysis of residential housing markets in large U.S. metropolitan areas

This dissertation consists of three essays focusing on the geography of U.S. residential housing markets, the role of housing attributes in the residential housing markets, as well as the housing tenure choices in large metropolitan areas. The first essay, "The Geography Of Residential Housing Prices In Large U.S. Metropolitan Housing Markets", conducts the clustering analysis to identify the geographic pattern of U.S. residential housing markets using American Housing Survey (AHS) data. Based on the housing prices and other relevant dwelling features, the K-means clustering analysis classifies the residential housing markets into three groups: a Coast group, a Central U.S. group and an in-between group. The clustering analysis rejects the hypothesis that the housing market associations between cities are random, and finds strong evidences of regional differences in housing price variations. The discriminant analysis is used to test the grouping analysis through the comparison with the region-based grouping method. The discriminant analysis provides strong support that the clustering analysis in this paper outperforms the region-based grouping analysis.;In the second essay, "Hedonic Analysis Of U.S. Residential Housing Markets", we apply the hedonic analysis to examine the relationship between prices of owner-occupied dwellings and housing attributes among the three clusters defined in Chapter One. The results show that both the housing attributes and the regional factors play an important role in determining the housing prices. The F-test verifies the disparity of housing attributes effects across clusters.;The third essay, "Analysis Of Tenure Choice And Timing Of Tenure Transition In U.S. Residential Housing Markets", incorporates the effect of household demographics in the discussion of house tenure choice and the timing of tenure transition. It employs the logistic model to identify the relationship between household features and the tenure status. The Cox proportional hazard model is used to investigate the determinants of the timing of tenure change. The empirical results suggest that household demographics, household composition and economic status features considerably affect household tenure choice, as well as the decision of the transition from housing rental to ownership.