This study provides new empirical evidence on urban land markets. In the first essay, I show that in cities where redevelopment is common, "teardown" sales are a tractable and reliable method for estimating land values. The second and third essays use information from teardown sales to empirically assess several important theoretical predictions about barriers to urban redevelopment emanating from the private market. The second paper offers some of the first direct empirical estimates on the effects of holdout sellers on the price of residential land. My estimates suggest that, but for strategic bargaining by holdout owners, the price of land for redevelopment would be significantly lower in high-demand cities like New York. These findings may also be suggestive of holdout owners causing project delays and frictions in the market for urban land assembly. Paper three provides indirect evidence on holdouts. I find strong evidence that the price-size function is increasing among smaller lots, as theory predicts will occur in the presence of significant assembly costs. However, this relationship is only made apparent when lot area is measured relative to a proxy for the optimal lot size.;This study contributes to the existing literature in multiple ways. First, I present and analyze a rich new dataset of land values and redevelopment activity in New York. Second, I provide new evidence on a promising approach for estimating land values in built-out cities, the so-called "teardown" method developed by Rosenthal and Helsley (1994). Third, this study helps fill a gap in the empirical literature on urban land markets. There is considerable anecdotal evidence and theoretical work on the effects of holdouts on land prices and redevelopment decisions, but the existing body of empirical work is sparse. In papers two and three, I present some of the first empirical evidence validating two important theoretical predictions: first, holdout bargaining drives up the cost of land for redevelopment; second, among lots most likely to experience assembly, the unit price of land increases with parcel size ("plottage").
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