THE DISTANCE AND ACCESSIBILITY TO THE CITY CENTRE AS DETERMINANTS OF ASKING HOUSING PRICES

Prices of dwellings on city’s housing market are infl uenced by various factors. A number of locational factors and internal characteristics that determine the price of housing were identified in various studies. In many of them, distance to the city centre or, alternatively, employment centre was found as an important factor due to the high significance in explaining differences in housing prices. This paper investigates the relationship between asking housing prices and distance or accessibility to city centre in Zagreb. Accessibility refers to the time distance measured by various travel modes. The research is conducted under monocentric city assumption, and connection between specifi ed varia- bles is tested using econometric cross-section analysis. The results of regression analysis reveal negative slopes of housing-price functions based on the use of asking (offer) pri- ces. The strongest relationship occurs between asking housing prices and spatial distan- ce measured in kilometres. Furthermore, the speed of the asking housing price decline varies depending on direction of moving toward city periphery. This can be explained by differences in attractiveness of particular urban areas. Therefore, it can be concluded that obtained results are broadly consistent with theoretical models as well as with actual characteristics of the city of Zagreb.