Real estate capital

Real estate capital is interesting not because it is a combination of land and physical capital (the usual interpretation), but because it represents a bundle of physical and social capital attributes. In places with high land values despite an elastic supply of land, it is social capital—that is, superior access to other people and adequate institutional support for economic interactions—that explains almost the entire capital value of local real estate. The capital value of real estate is around 50 percent of household wealth in Europe and the United States. In the Eurozone, the value of households’ direct real estate ownership amounted to more than €15 trillion in 2015. The price and thus capital value of a house varies between different locations because of actual and expected differences in accessibility, amenities and local services. An apartment on Fifth Avenue near Central Park may be therefore 50 times more valuable than a seemingly similar apartment in downtown Poughkeepsie, New York. Because of the extreme durability and fixity of real estate, there are substantial entrepreneurial opportunities in real estate markets. New uses, improved technical solutions and changes to the interior and exterior architecture of buildings are thus typical of the most dynamic cities. Some of the greatest increases in the cost of real estate are however not caused by an expansive regional economy, but instead by land use regulations that render the supply of developable land inelastic. North American examples of dramatic planning-induced increases in real estate values include Honolulu, San Francisco and Vancouver. Similar planning initiatives have made some of the world’s financial cities even less affordable than they would have been with less restrictive land use regulations, with Hong Kong and London being two notable examples of the combined land price effects of agglomeration economies and urban growth boundaries.