The value of green certification in the Singapore housing market

• Main Author: FESSELMEYER, Eric
• Format: text
• Language: English
• Published: Institutional Knowledge at Singapore Management University 2018
• Subjects: Green building; Green labels; Sustainability; Housing prices; Asian Studies; Real Estate
• Online Access: https://ink.library.smu.edu.sg/cis_research/10; https://ink.library.smu.edu.sg/context/cis_research/article/1009/viewcontent/1_s2.0_S016517651730486X_main.pdf
• Institution: Singapore Management University

In Singapore, a real estate developer sells new apartments in the same high-rise development before and after obtaining green certification. This allows the use of within-development variation in prices over time to measure the effect of green certification on housing prices, controlling for differences across developments. I find that green certification increases prices by around 3%, suggesting that buyers value certification, possibly because it signals the presence of less-salient green features. Moreover, the effect of certification is biggest for developments that receive the lowest green rating, which likely have fewer green features and are thus less obviously green.