Empirical analysis of relationship between land prices and housing prices in Shanghai - Research Proposal Example

This study is therefore a relevant on study that will aim to bridge the gap in literature on the seemingly lack of empirical research on the relationship between land prices and housing prices in Shanghai. Where there is a correlation, the research will take the position that since land is non-expenditure consuming product, real estate companies can focus on reducing prices of land so that accessibility to housing can improve. Once this is done, there will be a two-way benefit whereby both housing providers and consumers will benefit because supply will increase with increasing demand.

The proposed study aims to collect very credible first hand data about the relationship between land prices and prices of houses in Shanghai. In order to ensure that the data presented in the data are not merely based on speculation, a lot of emphasis will be placed on primary data collection, which will be conducted by the use of the case study research design. This means that the proposed methodology will be a quantitative research that identifies a unique case when a research setting, which will be critically studied through the collection of primary data from associated respondents.

As part of the research topic, the case that will be studied during the primary data collection is the empirical relationship between prices of land and the prices of houses. The research setting shall be the Shanghai Real Estate Agency. The fact that the study will be a case study means that the data collection approach will be focused specifically on the research setting, which is real estate in Shanghai rather than generalising data for the larger industry of real estate. Statistics from the Office of National Statistics indicates that there are over 500 registered real estate agencies in Shanghai (Eppen and Hanson, 2011).

The population of the study shall however focus on the marketing officers of these estate agencies alone. But as indicated by Evan and Stabler (2005),