Competition and market structure in local real estate markets
Abstract
The persistence of the standard six percent real estate sales commission across markets and over time calls into question the competitiveness of the residential real estate brokerage industry. While there is anecdotal evidence that some local real estate markets are fairly concentrated, no systematic study of market structures has been conducted. We have collected primary data on the number and market shares of real estate brokers in a variety of small, medium, and large real estate markets across the U.S. for 2007 and 2009. In addition to these cross sectional data, we have also collected longitudinal data on the size distribution of firms for Louisville, KY for a nine-year period. In our cross-sectional analysis of medium and large markets, we find no evidence that market concentration might create problems for competition. We do find that small markets on average have higher HHI’s than medium and large markets. The longitudinal analysis reveals that many small brokers are in and out of the market, selling a house or two one year and selling zero houses the next year.Download Info
If you experience problems downloading a file, check if you have the proper application to view it first. In case of further problems read the IDEAS help page. Note that these files are not on the IDEAS site. Please be patient as the files may be large.Bibliographic Info
Paper provided by University Library of Munich, Germany in its series MPRA Paper with number 27531.Length:
Date of creation: 15 Dec 2010
Date of revision:
Handle: RePEc:pra:mprapa:27531
Contact details of provider:
Postal: Schackstr. 4, D-80539 Munich, Germany
Phone: +49-(0)89-2180-2219
Fax: +49-(0)89-2180-3900
Web page: http://mpra.ub.uni-muenchen.de
More information through EDIRC
Related research
Keywords: HHI; real estate brokerage competition; Herfindahl-Hirschman Index;Find related papers by JEL classification:
- L85 - Industrial Organization - - Industry Studies: Services - - - Real Estate Services
This paper has been announced in the following NEP Reports:
- NEP-ALL-2011-01-03 (All new papers)
- NEP-COM-2011-01-03 (Industrial Competition)
- NEP-URE-2011-01-03 (Urban & Real Estate Economics)
References
References listed on IDEASPlease report citation or reference errors to , or , if you are the registered author of the cited work, log in to your RePEc Author Service profile, click on "citations" and make appropriate adjustments.:
- Lawrence J. White, 2006. "The Residential Real Estate Brokerage Industry: What Would More Vigorous Competition Look Like?," Working Papers 06-06, New York University, Leonard N. Stern School of Business, Department of Economics.
- Michael Carney, 1982. "Costs and Pricing of Home Brokerage Services," Real Estate Economics, American Real Estate and Urban Economics Association, vol. 10(3), pages 331-354.
- Fred A. Forgey & Walter E. Mullendore & Ronald C. Rutherford, 1997. "Market Structure in the Residential Real Estate Brokerage Market," Journal of Real Estate Research, American Real Estate Society, vol. 14(2), pages 107-116.
- Anderson, Randy I & Lewis, Danielle & Zumpano, Leonard V, 2000. "Residential Real Estate Brokerage Efficiency from a Cost and Profit Perspective," The Journal of Real Estate Finance and Economics, Springer, vol. 20(3), pages 295-310, May.
- Brown, Jeffrey, 2000.
"Does the Internet Make Markets More Competitive? Evidence from the Life Insurance Industry,"
Working Paper Series
rwp00-007, Harvard University, John F. Kennedy School of Government.
- Jeffrey R. Brown & Austan Goolsbee, 2002. "Does the Internet Make Markets More Competitive? Evidence from the Life Insurance Industry," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 110(3), pages 481-507, June.
- White, Lawrence J., 2006. "The Residential Real Estate Brokerage Industry: What Would More Vigorous Competition Look Like?," Working paper 102, Regulation2point0.
- Peter F. Colwell & David W. Marshall, 1986. "Market Share in the Real Estate Brokerage Industry," Real Estate Economics, American Real Estate and Urban Economics Association, vol. 14(4), pages 583-599.
- Natalya Delcoure & Norm G. Miller, 2002. "International Residential Real Estate Brokerage Fees and Implications for the US Brokerage Industry," International Real Estate Review, Asian Real Estate Society, vol. 5(1), pages 12-39.
- Leonard V. Zumpano & Harold W. Elder, 1994. "Economies of Scope and Density in the Market for Real Estate Brokerage Services," Real Estate Economics, American Real Estate and Urban Economics Association, vol. 22(3), pages 497-513.
- Zumpano, Leonard V & Elder, Harold W & Crellin, Glenn E, 1993. "The Market for Residential Real Estate Brokerage Services: Costs of Production and Economies of Scale," The Journal of Real Estate Finance and Economics, Springer, vol. 6(3), pages 237-50, May.
Citations
Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.Cited by:
- Yelowitz, Aaron & Scott, Frank & Beck, Jason, 2011. "The market for real estate brokerage services in low- and high-income neighborhoods: A 6 city study," MPRA Paper 35608, University Library of Munich, Germany.
- Iwata, Shinichiro & Sumita, Kazuto & Fujisawa, Mieko, 2012. "Price competition in the spatial real estate market: Allies or rivals?," MPRA Paper 37438, University Library of Munich, Germany.
Lists
This item is not listed on Wikipedia, on a reading list or among the top items on IDEAS.Statistics
Access and download statisticsCorrections
When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:pra:mprapa:27531For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: (Ekkehart Schlicht).
If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.
If references are entirely missing, you can add them using this form.
If the full references list an item that is present in RePEc, but the system did not link to it, you can help with this form.
If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.
Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

