Real estate economics
Hi, I am Kelvin Wong. As a real estate economist, I am keen to 1) advance our understanding of real estate as a consumption good, an investment asset, and a policy instrument, and 2) discover and explain how developers, investors, occupiers, and agents behave in an ‘inefficient’ market. Research, like a coffee filter, is to distill information from noise, and knowledge from belief.
Here are some of the research questions I have tried to answer. What determines real estate liquidity? How does liquidity affect transmission of price information, hence predictability of property price movements? How do short-term investors (including agents) take advantage of incomplete information? Does taxing them stabilize home prices? What determines if developers have market power in selling their new properties? How are the risks of buying pre-sale (off-plan) properties priced, and does mandating developers to disclose more information help? What governance problems does subdividing ownership create, and how is the redevelopment potential of old properties affected? What locations would enjoy higher capital appreciation during a boom? Do these locations also fall more during a bust? So on so forth.
Is this time the same? Housing markets during SARS and COVID-19 | Lu T, Wang C, Wong SK, Shi S
The pictures above link to some of the papers I published. The real estate market is the laboratory for me to conduct experiments and answer these questions. I have therefore established the HKU Real Estate Lab to make our research ideas and findings more accessible to the industry, the government, and the community at large. For example, a map was created to visualize the home price changes across 18 districts in Hong Kong since 1993, and a league table was built to rank the ‘winner’ and ‘loser’ districts each year.
I am also interested in the methodology of property performance measurement, which is the bread and butter of every real estate analysis. For example, I developed an online teaching case using property analytics for valuation. I also co-invented the repeat-sales property price index in Hong Kong, which became the first tradable housing price index in Asia.
Check my CV for my list of publications. Also take a look at the thesis topics of my graduate students. Feel free to email me if you have any questions or ideas.
