Urban Land Prices Under Uncertainty

The paper is organized as follows: Section I examines the type of building, characterized by its size, that will be built at a given date if the land is to be developed at that time. Section II presents a simple two-date, two states of nature, model for determining the value of the vacant land for the case where the future price of building units, and hence the size of the building that is to be constructed, is uncertain. A simple numerical example that illustrates this valuation technique is presented in Section III . Section IV presents a comparative static analysis of this valuation model which includes, among other things, an analysis of the effect of uncertainty on vacant land value. Section V examines a model where the current price and rental rate on building units as well as land values are endogenous and Section VI provides a numerical example which illustrates how the valuation technique can be applied to value land with many possible building dates and many possible states of nature corresponding to each date.