Real Estate Housing Market in Barcelona and Effects Derived from the Energy Efficiency: The Enervalor Project Results

Abstract

This paper makes an approach about the willingness to pay (WTP) in dwellings, as a consequence of its energy efficiency improvement, including the identification of socioeconomic factors that influence this WTP, as well as evaluating the real impact of the improvement in energy efficiency (using Hedonic Prices method) and determines whether there is a correspondence between both. This work has been developed in two-scales, Barcelona AMB (administrative) for the first WTP approach, and the Metropolitan Region of Barcelona (functional) for the second HP approach. Once analysis made; 1) regarding WTP has been detected that the majority of respondents (78%) are effectively WTP for accessing energy-qualified dwellings; 2) a correlation between Energy Performance (EPC) rankings and housing prices has been found. Using listing prices, a premium of 1.7%, for each EPC rank in the RMB, has been detected, and finally 3) has been, unexpectedly, detected that the declared WTP is slightly lower than the observed market premium, obtained of the applied Hedonic Pricing model.