Does subway mileage affect urban housing prices? An economic growth perspective

Studying the mechanism by which urban subway construction in China increases housing prices can help deepen the understanding of the factors that rises in housing prices and may assist the government to conduct reasonable macro-control of the real estate market. This article takes unbalanced panel data from 31 major cities in China as research samples and studies the mechanism by which urban subway construction increases housing prices by influencing urban economic growth. Our findings are as follows: (1) Subway construction promotes urban economic growth, and urban economic growth, from both the demand and supply sides, increases housing prices by increasing the disposable income of urban residents and the purchase price of residential land. (2) Urban subway construction increases city land purchase prices by affecting investors’ expectations of urban land development through the regulating effects of urban economic growth, which in turn increases housing prices. (3) Effective policy measures aimed at managing the speculative impact of metro construction on housing prices need to be viewed for the expectation management of housing and land speculative demand from both the demand side and the supply side.