Land banking and land markets: A literature review

Abstract

The purpose of this paper is to review the literature on land banking and the functioning of land markets to identify possible areas for future research. The paper adopts a three-stage systematic review design process to evaluate and synthesise relevant extant literature sourced from academic databases like Scopus, ScienceDirect, Web of Science, Directory of Open Access Journals, JSTOR, Hein Online and Wiley Online Library. The findings suggest a research pattern that concentrates largely on public land banking within the context of formal land markets and neo-classical theorisation. The findings further show that a generic outcome of land banking on the functioning of the land market is rarely established. Consequently, the need to pay attention to informal land markets and institutional economics theorisation under the domain of private and semi-public land banking has been identified as possible research areas for exploration. The review excludes contemporary interpretation of land banking in the US, which is usually limited to the domain of acquiring and converting tax delinquent, vacant and foreclosed properties into productive use. The paper advocates for the basis of exploring areas that have been largely neglected in the literature on land banking and the functioning of land markets.