An integrated analysis of land market in an inland area of Sicily

Abstract

In this study a land market analysis of the 22,000 hectares covered by Corleone town area for the 2007-2012 period was carried out. Data on 372 sales agreements concerning agricultural and building land were directly collected from notaries' offices. Over 50% of land sales concerned land areas below 0.50 hectares, whereas just 1% of the overall land sold was larger than 10 hectares. Nearly 75% of sample observations were represented by land sales smaller than 1 hectare. The average land area per purchase was just over 1 hectare. The overall money exchanged in the whole period amounted to nearly 6 million euro, with an average price per sale equal to 16,339.45 (sic), and an average unitary price of 15,000 (sic)/hectare. The results of regression analysis showed that the adopted model explained around 2/3 of land price variability, and the estimates of the regression coefficients concerning land use areas were statistically significant. The unitary price analysis did not provide acceptable results, apparently because some independent variables were missing, due to their tied links with some physical factors of the investigated area. The use of a GIS-based analysis allowed us to gain an insight into Corleone land market activity through a graphical representation of several images concerning spatial and time dynamics of land sales, represented by size, land use and unitary market price.