Apartment prices, state of the economy and periods suspicious of redlining

This research is an investigation about the relationship of the apartment prices development in two contrasting Rotterdam neighborhoods and the general Dutch economical circumstances. Examined is the price development in the two contrasting neighborhoods during the economical business cycle and its distinct phases. The research period is 1995-2011. For each investigated neighborhood, a weighted repeated sales index is constructed for this period. All this is done in order to come to an answer to the research question: Is there a relationship between the social status of city neighborhoods and the development of apartment prices, while considering the state of the economy? These constructed apartment price indexes are also used to examine the suspicious of redlining for Rotterdam. For this purpose, also a counting table of number of transactions for each neighborhood is developed. The outcome of this research is that apartment prices in both the ‘good’ and ‘bad’ standing neighborhood show the same development, in each distinct general economic circumstance. The suspicious of redlining is not supported by the data used for this investigation.