Evaluation of the Effect of Distance to Central Business District (CBD) to Resident House Rent Pattern in Port Harcourt

Abstract

This paper explores the effect of distance to central business district on rental pattern of houses in Port Harcourt. Its objectives include computing the range of house rent in the study area; examining the effects of distance to central business district on house rent and the applicability of Alonso’s (1964) bid-rent theory about land value in Port Harcourt metropolis. It also tests the hypothesis that there is no significant difference in rent with distance from the central business district. In picking the sample systematic random sampling technique was applied. Although 44.4 percent representing 20 of the total sampling size were picked. The simple regression statistical method was adopted to analyze the data “from the study the range of house rent is N120, 000. The regression result shows that there is positive but little relationship between house rent and distance to CBD. However, the empirical result of the findings on whether rent does not decrease with distance from the CBD indicates that the rise 0.486. r2 = 0.23620 and the coefficient of determination is = 23.04%. The result of the hypothesis revealed that the correlation coefficient of house rent is 0.486 and the r2 is 0.23620 while the coefficient of determination is 23.04. Thus the null hypothesis is rejected implying that house rent does not decrease with distance from CBD. The empirical result therefore showed that Alonso’s (1964) bid-rent theory of residential location is not application in Port Harcourt’s situation. As a result of the findings of the study, the researcher suggests that government should encourage property development at different areas.

Keywords: Distance, CBD, Housing, Bid rent