Effect of Urban Land-Use Planning Regulations on Residential Property Investment Returns: Evidence from Literature

Abstract

Different socio-economic activities in the urban areas take place on land, a unit whose relationships and significance are guided by policies. Literature have clearly shown that urban land use planning and management policies and regulations influence residential price due to its latitudinal bond with locational, structural and neighbourhood attributes in the housing market. This paper reviewed related literature and observed that the trends in studies on the effect of urban land use planning regulations on residential property investment returns have been advancing in continents like Asia, America, Australia and Europe but lagging behind in African countries like Nigeria. It was found that computable but varied price premium were paid for housing attributes such as bedrooms, greenbelt land and proximity to school by buyers/renters for residential properties. Hence, these variables are significant predictors of housing price/rent. This paper recommends that these variables should be considered in urban studies of developing countries like Nigeria with a history of ineffective urban land use planning and management policy to unearth the peculiarities of their urban regions.