An Assessment of the Impact of Public Infrastructure on Residential Property Values in Minna

Abstract

This study provides evidence on the value capitalization effect of public infrastructure in Minna. It employs rental transactions and datasets constructed from various secondary sources to provide information on geometric and spatial distribution of 4 groups of public infrastructure. Due to aggregation bias in these data sets, we utilize the quartile procedure to construct aggregate indices which capture the effect of the different infrastructure stock component but not infrastructure quality. The quartiles were used to compute location quotients for 12 a priori neighbourhoods, hence providing the basis for grouping and classifying neighbourhoods into low and high infrastructure neighbourhoods. A tenable statistical justification for this neighbourhood split by infrastructure is the Hodges-Lehman point estimate of shift (Δ) at 95.89 confidence level which is (−3.234,−11.072,−0.339) which revealed that the two classified neighbourhoods (low and high) are different. Findings revealed that geometric and spatial distribution of infrastructure is reasonably uneven across the study area. In addition, marked variability exists in quality of infrastructure between low and high-infrastructure neighbourhoods based on respondents‘ perceptual rating. The conjecture that high-infrastructure neighbourhoods have higher residential property values in contrast with that associated with low-infrastructure neighbourhoods was also found to be plausible. The capitalization effect of public infrastructure is evident in a falling market: high-infrastructure neighbourhoods significantly outperformed low-infrastructure neighbourhoods by N 14470, while in period of soaring property value, high-infrastructure neighbourhoods command N 57305.60 more than the low-infrastructure neighbourhoods. These findings have substantial implications for optimal location of public infrastructure and its capitalization into urban residential property value. To maximize this capitalization effect, policy makers and planners must efficiently allocate public infrastructure across space.