Urban and peri-urban residential rental markets: similar or different?

Residential rents are analysed in the Walloon region in Belgium. In the region, particularly touched by urban sprawl, households rent accommodation in urbanised areas as well as in their peripheries. The average rents per square meter in urban agglomerations and peri-urban areas are the same. At the same time, important provincial differences exist. In particular, peri-urban rents in some provinces are higher than those in the biggest cities of the region. Are the urban and peri-urban rental markets different? The aim of this study is to evaluate the role of the regional territorial structure in the determination of rents.With a hedonic regression model, this paper seeks the best treatment of spatial disparities in order to better understand rent determinants and their impact in the region with the focus on urban agglomerations and peri-urban areas. Regional and municipal variables and proximity to attractive foreign cities have been tested to understand the role of the regional territorial structure. For the same reason, the hedonic models are constructed in provincial submarkets. OLS, spatial and geographically weighted regression methods are applied. The map of location value response surface supplements hedonic analysis.Significant disparities between the willingness to pay for the higher levels of comfort in agglomerations and peri-urban zones are found. The calculated market basket rent reveals a significant difference: the rent of a typical dwelling is 11%-18%higher in peri-urban areas than in urban agglomerations. Another finding is that proximity to several foreign neighbouring cities influences rents in Wallonia, while the accessibility to the biggest regional cities does not have a significant impact.