Commodification of Development Rights and What It Does to the Urban Housing Market in Taiwan

Abstract

The enactment of the transfer of development rights (TDR) policy in Taiwan since the late 1990s is part of a broader trend of commodification and deregulation of development rights. This study examines the spillover effect of TDR on the sale prices of existing housing stock that constitutes the main housing market for the majority of urban residents. Three hedonic models, ordinary least squares (OLS) regression, quantile regression, and spatial lag regression, show that the presence of TDR utilization in real estate development is a significant price driver that generates a financial burden that disproportionally affects poor families.