An Estimation of the Impact of Feng-Sui on Housing Prices in Taiwan: An Application of Quantile Regression

Abstract

Feng-shui is an old and traditional body of knowledge in Chinese society. Feng-shui has a significant influence on many aspects in daily life for most Chinese, including choosing locations for dwelling units, offices, burial sites, and so on. However, there have been few studies on the impact of feng-shui on housing prices. By applying a housing hedonic equation and a data set of 77,624 observations in Taiwan, we have attempted to estimate the impact of feng-shui on housing prices. We find that all six types of bad feng-shui have a significantly negative impact on housing prices. Moreover, by applying a quantile regression, we find that most of the bad feng-shui has a stronger negative impact on expensive dwelling units. Our findings confirm that people who buy expensive housing units care about feng-shui more than those who buy less expensive housing units.