Modelling Time to Sale of Second Hand Owner Occupied Residential Properties in Glasgow

How quickly owner occupied dwellings can be sold has implications for a wide range of personal economic decisions, and is potentially useful in explaining local market dynamics. Thus far, the literature on time on the market has been almost exclusively North American. This paper seeks to present one of the first econometric analyses of time-to-sale of second hand owner-occupied residential properties in the UK. The research is made possible by the recent availability of transactions data on Glasgow house sales provided by GSPC (Glasgow Solicitors Property Centre). An additional distinguishing feature of the paper is that it operates within the context of the Scottish blind or sealed bidding system of house purchase. The paper sets out a theoretical model of time to sale, which is then applied to the GSPC data. This analysis is based on the results of a series of individual hypothesis tests about time on the market that in turn inform the development of a series of hazard models under different specifications (including proportional hazards estimation, sample selection issues and bootstrapped sampling). The paper concludes by pulling together the many empirical findings of the study, assessing their relative significance for analysis, and suggests where future research might next go.