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Weekly Updates* Ujlipotvaros, i.e. the inner part of district XIII situated by the river (best image),
* Terezvaros, district VI,
* Erzsebetvaros, district VII (VI and VII are small districts, where the government is passive in relation to urban regenerations),
* Jozsefvaros, district VIII (worst image) and
* Ferencvaros, district IX (rehabilitated). No large differences exist across the microlocations within this 'zone'. (The city-core District V is here excluded, as it is too luxurious in comparison with the rest of inner Pest.) This area is characterised as transitional zone or potential renewal area. It is assumed that the move takes place from outside this belt. A number of conclusions could be made from the prior findings from the Budapest housing market (see Kauko, 2007), according to which the spatial housing pattern in relation to price and quality on the micro-locational level is mosaic-like; not just in the poorer area (as suggested by Ladanyi, 1989); but in the whole city's housing market there is a substantial heterogeneity. The type, age and size of the house and its immediate vicinity matter more than the location per se. There is no notable association between price-level and the district location. Even the worst districts possess some relatively attractive places, and also some expensive small dwellings in modern/modernised, non-panel buildings; likewise, even the best districts possess dwellings that are typically cheap because of one reason or another.
The issue of sample size was brought up in the previous section. Nine selected experts agreed to participate in this exercise: a manager of a large developer, a manager of the land management company of one of the district governments, a real estate agent, a real estate consultant, three planning consultants, a statistical officer, and a professor who also worked as a planner. This number is small, largely due to language barriers experienced in this context. The problem was overcome by triangulating the results with other findings of Budapest obtained from the descriptive literature, empirical modelling of Kauko (2007), and in-depth expert interviews.
The first task was to map the relevant differences between micro-locations and recent developments in the study area. The following points were raised in the interviews. To start with, the middle-/upper-middle income groups have more heterogeneous preferences than lower income groups, and as such, very few locations on the Pest side are suitable for them. Whereas Buda is improving, in Pest big pockets are degrading faster than other areas, and the professional middle-class is unable to move out of them. On the other hand, the group of 25-35 years old buy in the inner city after seeing illustrations of refurbished flats in magazines. These projects are reasonably successful.
The Pest side market provides plenty of interesting motives and NIMBY aspects. In 2003 Irish investors invented the market in the districts V VI, and VII. However, they did not cross 'the lesser Boulevard' (Muzeum korut) to the Palace Quarters, which in fact is a fairly popular neighbourhood among local residents, as this area administratively already is part of the infamous VIII district. The image of district VIII is considered bad and worse than the reality. However, this is about the thinking of the people, and this thinking has begun to change. New residents who come from the countryside do not have problem with the image of the district.
On the other hand, even districts with bad reputation (VI, VII, VIII) include smaller parts: i.e. neighbourhoods, that locals know are attractive. These make then good bargains. In particular, district VIII comprises totally different areas: the inner part (Palace quarters), which also is the densest area, is without doubt the most attractive neighbourhood; the Grand Boulevard is the cutting line between the inner and middle parts; the outer parts, including the Clerks quarters, are far away and represent different area types altogether. Within the mid-Jozsefvaros there is a diversity of areas in relation to two factors: (1) social status; (2) housing and location quality. New housing development has begun in two of the eleven quarters that the strategic development plan of Jozsefvaros partitions the whole district (Rev8, 2004). In district VIII no 'real market' has emerged yet, as people are waiting to see how the area will develop. In district VIII the housing prices increased merely because of news--urban renewal and gentrification where about to happen, but the prices were not realised at the market. According to one expert, however, in district IX the reason for high prices are not in social factors, but that of the actions of the first homebuyers, who depend on the availability of subsidies, and the foreign investor-buyers, who are influenced by macroeconomic trends.
4.2. The attributes
Given a defined set of attributes, and a set of respondents, the AHP enables profiling the demand side into a certain combination of attribute levels. Additionally, more open in-depth interviews were carried out on the same respondents. Below each of the attributes is defined, and after that, the research findings are presented. The findings tell whether, and in what kind of particular circumstances, a given attribute was considered important or not.
Accessibility and proximity: distances to work and services (-) and the level of the public transport system (+).
* This is a 'given'; public transport is good everywhere within the study area: 5 to 10 minutes difference in distances makes no difference, which apparently is typical in Eastern European cities.
* In particular, for the young upper classes, who are mobile, this is not important.
Social factors of the neighbourhood: the socio-economical status (+) and externalities caused by social disturbances (-).
* There may be a large variation within one and the same quarter (as already noted).
* This is worst in the outer parts of district VII and parts of district VIII.
* One comment emphasised the effect of noise, vandalism and other dis-amenities (nuisances), caused by services (see below) that are against residential use. Service infrastructure in the neighbourhood: availability and level of all kinds of public and private services (+).
* All areas were considered unattractive in this respect--only the big streets have good services.
* Services are good everywhere. (Hence a contradiction with the view above.)
* People are concerned about schools, but they are also mobile (as noted: good public transport) and do not need one in the vicinity.
Physical environment, two types:
1. Hard/tangible factors: density, that is per sq.m. building efficiency. As long as one is situated within approximately three to four km from the city centre, and thereby outside the influence of the repulsion effect of 1970s housing estates which produce a dense and unattractive location on average eight to nine km from the city centre (see Bertaud, 2006, p. 99), the housing consumers prefer high densities. That is to say, the closer to the Grand Boulevard, the better the location is. Further from the city centre, however, the situation is the opposite as people prefer the suburban single family house.
2. Soft/intangible factors: 'pleasantness', visual factors, greenery etc. are secondary factors. Furthermore, the image implies, among other things, that the particular history of a neighbourhood may be an issue of relevance. By and large, the physical environment is deteriorated in most of this part of town; particularly, it is everywhere in mid-Jozsefvaros and Erzsebetvaros bad.
Municipality (kerulet): whether the municipal image and local government policy, including the social policy and the right to set taxes, matters for the decision. The comments unveil some interesting spatially diversified and conditional effects related to images and policies:
* Young people tend to have higher tolerance for the bad image areas in VIII and VII than older people.
* The policy does not matter so much for ordinary households. The final comparison was on a higher level in the hierarchy between the composite locational quality, i.e. all the locational attributes above taken together, and the house itself (see Table 1).
Thus, on balance location is more important than the house, which as such is well known from household surveys. However, here at least three different viewpoints could be distinguished behind these scores. First and foremost, like many other cities, also Budapest was perceived as a fairly segregated city, and the more segregated the city, the more location counts for the buyer's choice. Second, one respondent emphasized that the area matters only for the first dwelling buyers, and that, when moving upward in the housing career, the quality of the house matters much more than the location. Finally, at least one interview clearly maintained that, usually both the location and the house are severely deteriorated within this segment and neither of them really matters for the potential buyer or renter.
4.3. AHP elicited profiles for demand side segments
The idea was to create one aggregate profile and a few more disaggregated profiles based on the elicitation intensities and their variation (see Kauko, 2006, for prior exercises undertaken in Metropolitan Helsinki and the Dutch Randstad). The profiles were aggregated using the Perth -formula (a + 4b + c)/6, where a is the smallest value, b the median and c the largest value of the observations. This way extreme elicitations for a and c do not bias the calculations too much. This is considered a safe way of aggregating the profiles.
[ILLUSTRATION OMITTED]
The aggregate profile is shown in Figure 2. (The disaggregated profiles are obtainable from the author upon request.) Overall, the social factors are the most important and the services the least important attributes. It can be noted that the accessibility obtains a very low score. The responses may also be divided into four differentiated patterns based on simple grouping of the profiles (see Table 2). In order to make connections with known cases, a number of simple labels were given in order to easily generalise the type of dominating features we are dealing with, according to the principles of naturalistic generalisation already explained.
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