Property PhD Spotlight Seminar showcases doctoral research
The seminar gave two doctoral researchers from the Department of Property a platform to present work in progress on artificial intelligence in housing markets and real estate finance, and to engage in discussion with colleagues across the department.
The Department of Property at the University of Auckland Business School held a Property PhD Spotlight Seminar on Wednesday, 3 June 2026, providing a platform for doctoral researchers to present developing work and engage in academic discussion with colleagues. The seminar was held from 12:00 to 13:00 in room 260-6115 at the Owen G Glenn Building, 12 Grafton Road, and was also offered online via Zoom.
The seminar featured two presenters, both PhD candidates in the Department of Property, whose research spans the application of artificial intelligence to housing market analysis and the financing of real estate developers.
Qijun (Kiki) Zhang presented work titled “A Measurement-Error Correction Framework for LLM-Inferred Demographics in Housing Markets.” Her research addresses a methodological challenge in built environment research: administrative property records contain detailed transaction and building information but rarely record the demographics of owners. Recent advances in large language models make it possible to infer demographic proxies from owner names at scale, yet these inferences are probabilistic rather than observed and can introduce classification measurement error. Her paper develops TRACE-AI (Traceable Measurement Error Correction for AI-inferred attributes), a framework for using such inferred information while accounting for that error. Applied to Auckland residential transactions from 2000 to 2024, the corrected estimates reverse a near-zero ordinary least squares coefficient into a sizeable positive North-East Asian price premium, consistent with classical attenuation bias. Zhang is supervised by Associate Professor William Cheung and Associate Professor Edward Yiu, and her research interests lie in housing market microstructure and the built environment.
Feifei Huang presented work titled “Financing Constraints and Equity Return Pricing: Evidence from Chinese Listed Real Estate Developers under the Three Red Lines Framework.” Her study examines how financing constraints under China’s Three Red Lines framework are priced in the equity returns of listed real estate developers, using monthly stock returns and accounting data for Chinese A-share non-financial listed firms. The results show that listed developers exhibit an equity-return discount, and the mechanism tests link each of the three red-line indicators to a distinct channel of financing risk. Huang’s research focuses on housing and real estate markets, with interests including buyer behaviour, urban analytics, property developers, and credit constraints. Before commencing her doctoral studies, she worked in investment management and consulting in China, and she holds a Master of Finance and a Bachelor of Economics from Renmin University of China.
By bringing together doctoral researchers working across applied econometrics, behavioural and information economics, and capital markets, the seminar reflected the breadth of research underway in the Department of Property and the department’s commitment to supporting its doctoral community.
The event was organised by the Department of Property at the University of Auckland Business School.