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This study empirically tests the volatility effects on land development options using the Singapore's government land sales data from 1996 to 2018. We find that development land option premiums increase by 5% on average with one standard deviation increase in conditional volatility, which is consistent with the prediction of the standard real options model. However, the high volatility effects on development options are negative in an extremely high volatility state, and risk‐averse developers exercise development options earlier than that predicted by the risk‐neutral model. The reduction in real option premium in an extremely high volatility state is not explained by market competition and risk‐mitigating mechanism. The results reveal the real estate developers' behavior change in different states of market volatility. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The hedonic-based regression approach has been utilised extensively to investigate the relationship between house prices and housing characteristics. However, this approach is subject to criticisms arising from potential problems relating to fundamental model assumptions and estimation such as the identification of supply and demand, market disequilibrium, the selection of independent variables, the choice of functional form of hedonic equation and market segmentation. This study introduces and utilises an alternative approach—the decision tree approach, which is an important statistical pattern recognition tool. Using the Singapore resale public housing market as a case study, the article demonstrates the usefulness of this technique in examining the relationship between house prices and housing characteristics, identifying the significant determinants of housing prices and predicting housing prices. The built tree shows that homebuyers are more concerned about the basic housing characteristics of two- and three-room flats or four-room flats such as floor area, model type and flat age. However, homebuyers of five-room flats pay more attention to floor level in addition to the basic housing characteristics. In addition, homebuyers of executive apartments are less concerned about basic quantitative characteristics and have higher housing consumption expectations and pay more attention to ‘quality’ and service characteristics such as recreational facilities and the living environment. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]