The application of GIS to analyse occupier chains and property market filtering

Greenhalgh, Paul and King, Helen (2010) The application of GIS to analyse occupier chains and property market filtering. Project Report. RICS, London.

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Abstract

With funding from the RICS Education Trust, Paul Greenhalgh and Helen King of Northumbria University, UK sought to investigate whether using Geographic Information System (GIS) can enhance the representation and analysis of property occupier chaining data – the method used to analyse the chain of moves that take place when firms occupy new premises. The way that they tested this was by transferring a dataset of office and industrial occupier chains in Tyne and Wear that had been collected by Paul Greehalgh for his PhD study into a GIS to illustrate, measure and analyse the chaining data more effectively than had previously been possible. What they were able to show was that, although the process is time-consuming, it is a relatively straightforward and logical process to translate property occupier chaining data into a GIS. The resultant GIS representation was able to replicate and verify findings of the original research. For example, it confirmed the accuracy of the original calculation of the distances that occupiers move, but it also revealed that the average distance moved diminished the further that they occur along a chain. The team then used rateable value and VAT registration datasets to interpret the origin of occupiers of new office and industrial developments, and the location of vacant chain end property. Of the two, the strongest correlation was with new VAT registrations within a three year period. New VAT registrations are associated with levels of economic activity and enterprise which would generate new businesses or start-ups that would typically take up small office and industrial units, thus absorbing vacant accommodation and contributing to property market filtering. Although the work used the Tyne and Wear region as a practical example, the key objective of the work was to test the applicability and robustness of the approach. As such, the key findings from the work relate as much to the process involved as to any specific insights into the Tyne and Wear region:
• The application of GIS to property occupier chaining data was successfully demonstrated and was able, not only to verify the findings of the original research, but was able to extend the breadth and depth of analysis
• The GIS was used to produce maps of the Tyne and Wear conurbation, displaying occupier chaining data, to enable further interpretation and analysis
• By exploiting existing datasets it was possible to characterise the locations where occupiers relocate from and where property voids persist; this enhances our understanding of the impact of occupier displacement on the dynamics of commercial property markets
• a multi-criteria analysis Business Activity Score (BAS) was developed with which to measure the relative performance of Middle Super Output Areas within the conurbation
• The property chaining GIS may be used, not only to evaluate previous property market interventions, but also to inform the development of spatial strategies that shape new ones.

The detailed and comprehensive investigation of occupier chains, generated by occupiers relocating to new commercial and industrial developments, makes an important contribution to our understanding of the spatial impact of development on local property markets, in terms of the displacement of property occupiers, the operation of property market filtering and the side-effects of public sector intervention in land and property markets.

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