Journal of Urban Economics and Management

Maintaining historical houses, as symbolic identity phenomena, is a must and today it seems as if the owners of such houses are the key figures in maintaining them however, passing the laws and regulations for the maintenance of historical houses seem to have limited their ownership rights. Besides limiting factors in property development, there should be encouraging motives so that the maintenance process could be fostered. Thus, the current article, aiming at focusing on the individual benefit to help serve the social benefit, is to evaluate the passed law, numbered 28/91/2293, by Isfahan Islamic city council on exemptions for repair tax, parking-lot elimination, and VAT on function change of all historical buildings of the city of Isfahan. The current research was conducted on the historical district of Jolfa in Isfahan. The research is practical/applied, purpose-wise and among field research, method-wise. Data analysis was done upon opportunity-cost analysis and the required statistical data and documents were collected in Winter 2012. The results indicated that, by comparing maintaining opportunity-cost and the subsidy granted as a result of the passed law for the very district, for 47 percent of the historical properties, the granted subsidy is sufficient enough for opportunity-cost maintenance and for the other properties, by increasing the opportunity for land efficiency, the difference between maintaining opportunity-cost and the granted subsidy would increase hence, the current law would not be effective enough to cover the maintaining opportunity-cost.