Q 1983 Urban Studies The Empirical Determination of House Prices, Error Correction Mechanisms and the Correction of Errors

The determination of house prices has been a grow-ing area of research and debate in recent years. A recent paper by Nellis and Longbottom (1981) summarises some of the work and presents another model, claiming it to be '... a stepping stone, albeit a large one, towards a fuller understanding of the workings of the housing market'. We would take issue with this claim, believing the paper to be seriously at fault in both its theoretical and empiri-cal analysis. We believe that its conclusions are not warranted, and wish to dispute them before they become accepted as part of the housing `literature '. The errors fall into major and minor categories and we shall list the major ones first since these obviously constitute the bulk of our criticism. W