IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/sae/urbstu/v41y2004i13p2621-2646.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

'Colonia' Land and Housing Market Performance and the Impact of Lot Title Regularisation in Texas

Author

Listed:
  • Peter M. Ward

    (Department of Sociology and LBJ School of Public Affairs, University of Texas at Austin, Sid Richardson Hall, Austin, Texas 78712-1167, USA, pward@uts.cc.utexas.edu)

  • Flavio de Souza

    (Department of Architecture and Urbanism, Universidade Federale de Algoas, Campus A. C. Simoes, Cidade Universitaria, Maceio—AL 57072-970, Brazil, fdesouza@ctec.ufal.br)

  • Cecilia Giusti

    (Center for Housing and Urban Development, Texas A & M University, College Station, Texas, 77843-3137, USA, cgiusti@archone.tamu.edu)

Abstract

This article analyses performance of the land market in several irregular settlements ( colonias ) outside Rio Grande City, Starr County, Texas. Specifically, it explores the impact upon land prices of a major title 'regularisation' initiative to clear property titles of very poor households undertaken by the Community Resources Group (CRG) Receivership Program at the behest of the Texas State government between 1995 and 2002. Land price data and trends are analysed using a major CRG database of over 1400 price records and files, complemented by a questionnaire survey of over 260 households applied by the research team as part of an evaluation of the CRG Program. The data show that prices are relatively 'flat' in real terms over time and that, while there was a spike in prices during the early 1990s, there does not appear to have been any significant increase since regularisation. The data suggest that prices appear to be shaped more by socially determined criteria associated with the developers themselves, rather than by settlement characteristics, location, etc. Regularisation of land title appears to make little difference to land market performance and, while colonias are a vehicle for investment for low-income groups, the rate of return compared with other segments of the (formal) property market is very low. These findings are compared with similar work for less developed countries and also challenge those theories that argue in favour of land regularisation as a means to improve land market performance and integration of the urban poor.

Suggested Citation

  • Peter M. Ward & Flavio de Souza & Cecilia Giusti, 2004. "'Colonia' Land and Housing Market Performance and the Impact of Lot Title Regularisation in Texas," Urban Studies, Urban Studies Journal Limited, vol. 41(13), pages 2621-2646, December.
  • Handle: RePEc:sae:urbstu:v:41:y:2004:i:13:p:2621-2646
    DOI: 10.1080/0042098042000294592
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1080/0042098042000294592
    Download Restriction: no

    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1080/0042098042000294592?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Daniel H. Cole & Peter Z. Grossman, 2002. "The Meaning of Property Rights: Law versus Economics?," Land Economics, University of Wisconsin Press, vol. 78(3), pages 317-330.
    2. Ann Varley, 1987. "The Relationship between Tenure Legalization and Housing Improvements: Evidence from Mexico City," Development and Change, International Institute of Social Studies, vol. 18(3), pages 463-481, July.
    3. Ann Varley, 2002. "Private or public: debating the meaning of tenure legalization," International Journal of Urban and Regional Research, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 26(3), pages 449-461, September.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Varley, Ann, 2007. "Gender and Property Formalization: Conventional and Alternative Approaches," World Development, Elsevier, vol. 35(10), pages 1739-1753, October.
    2. Mengzhu Zhang & Shenjing He, 2020. "Informal Property Rights as Relational and Functional: Unravelling the Relational Contract in China's Informal Housing Market," International Journal of Urban and Regional Research, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 44(6), pages 967-988, November.
    3. Jean‐Louis Van Gelder, 2009. "Legal Tenure Security, Perceived Tenure Security and Housing Improvement in Buenos Aires: An Attempt towards Integration," International Journal of Urban and Regional Research, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 33(1), pages 126-146, March.
    4. Charlotte Lemanski, 2011. "Moving up the Ladder or Stuck on the Bottom Rung? Homeownership as a Solution to Poverty in Urban South Africa," International Journal of Urban and Regional Research, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 35(1), pages 57-77, January.
    5. Ramin Keivani & Michael Mattingly & Hamid Majedi, 2008. "Public Management of Urban Land, Enabling Markets and Low-income Housing Provision: The Overlooked Experience of Iran," Urban Studies, Urban Studies Journal Limited, vol. 45(9), pages 1825-1853, August.
    6. Monika Streule & Ozan Karaman & Lindsay Sawyer & Christian Schmid, 2020. "Popular Urbanization: Conceptualizing Urbanization Processes Beyond Informality," International Journal of Urban and Regional Research, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 44(4), pages 652-672, July.
    7. Andrea Asoni, 2008. "Protection Of Property Rights And Growth As Political Equilibria," Journal of Economic Surveys, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 22(5), pages 953-987, December.
    8. Clara Irazábal, 2009. "One Size Does Not Fit All: Land Markets and Property Rights for the Construction of the Just City," International Journal of Urban and Regional Research, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 33(2), pages 558-563, June.
    9. Han, Wenjing & Zhang, Xiaoling & Zhang, Zhengfeng, 2019. "The role of land tenure security in promoting rural women’s empowerment: Empirical evidence from rural China," Land Use Policy, Elsevier, vol. 86(C), pages 280-289.
    10. Matyukha, Andriy, 2017. "Business groups in agriculture impact of ownership structures on performance: The case of Russia's agroholdings," Studies on the Agricultural and Food Sector in Transition Economies 254051, Institute of Agricultural Development in Transition Economies (IAMO).
    11. Valentino Cattelan, 2013. "Introduction. Babel, Islamic finance and Europe: preliminary notes on property rights pluralism," Chapters, in: Valentino Cattelan (ed.), Islamic Finance in Europe, chapter 1, pages 1-12, Edward Elgar Publishing.
    12. Jill Wigle, 2010. "Social Relations, Property and ‘Peripheral’ Informal Settlement: The Case of Ampliación San Marcos, Mexico City," Urban Studies, Urban Studies Journal Limited, vol. 47(2), pages 411-436, February.
    13. Martina Eckardt & Wolfgang Kerber, 2024. "Property rights theory, bundles of rights on IoT data, and the EU Data Act," European Journal of Law and Economics, Springer, vol. 57(1), pages 113-143, April.
    14. Korenok, Oleg & Millner, Edward & Razzolini, Laura, 2017. "Feelings of ownership in dictator games," Journal of Economic Psychology, Elsevier, vol. 61(C), pages 145-151.
    15. Valentino Cattelan, 2017. "Legal Pluralism, Property Rights and the Paradigm of Islamic Economics التعددية القانونية وحقوق الملكية والنموذج الإرشادي للاقتصاد الإسلامي," Journal of King Abdulaziz University: Islamic Economics, King Abdulaziz University, Islamic Economics Institute., vol. 30(1), pages 21-36, January.
    16. Jean-Philippe Robé, 2011. "The Legal Structure of the Firm," Post-Print hal-04212777, HAL.
    17. Mona Fawaz, 2008. "An Unusual Clique of City‐Makers: Social Networks in the Production of a Neighborhood in Beirut (1950–75)," International Journal of Urban and Regional Research, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 32(3), pages 565-585, September.
    18. repec:abd:kauiea:v:30:y:2017:i:1:p:21-36 is not listed on IDEAS
    19. Krutilla Kerry & Alexeev Alexander, 2012. "The Normative Implications of Political Decision-Making for Benefit-Cost Analysis," Journal of Benefit-Cost Analysis, De Gruyter, vol. 3(2), pages 1-36, May.
    20. Flower, Benjamin C.R., 2018. "Does informal tenure result in land inequality? A critique of tenure formalisation reforms in Cambodia," Land Use Policy, Elsevier, vol. 77(C), pages 240-248.
    21. A. Nicita & M. Rizzolli & H. Smith, 2012. "Exploring Coase’s world: an introduction," International Review of Economics, Springer;Happiness Economics and Interpersonal Relations (HEIRS), vol. 59(2), pages 111-120, July.

    More about this item

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:sae:urbstu:v:41:y:2004:i:13:p:2621-2646. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    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 CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc 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 RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: SAGE Publications (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.gla.ac.uk/departments/urbanstudiesjournal .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.