Shooting up liquidity: the effect of crime on real estate

December 22, 2021
Issue 2021-20

Download file now

The file can be downloaded with the button below.

Abstract

We combine real estate data with various types of crime data using time and geospatial information to detect discontinuities in transaction densities and pricing around crime events in Rochester, NY. Discontinuities in transaction densities invalidate causal inference for price responses implied by the regression discontinuity design (RDD) approach. However, these discontinuities also capture the liquidity response to crimes and, together with the commonly emphasized price response, provide a richer picture of how crime affects housing valuation. A calibrated match-and-bargain model reveals that house valuations decrease between 6% and 25% after a crime, depending on the type of crime. These predictions are manifolds of the estimated effect on prices documented in this paper and in the literature. The welfare effects of crime are not uniform across market participants and can elicit considerable disappointment to uninformed buyers that move into a high-crime neighborhood.

Issue:
20
Pages:
81
JEL classification:
C31, R21, R23, R30
Keywords:
Crime, real estate, liquidity effects, density discontinuity
Year:
2021

Additional files

Related content

Author(s)

  • Alexander Dentler

  • Dr. Enzo Rossi

Your settings

Required: These cookies (e.g. for storing your IP address) cannot be rejected as they are necessary to ensure the operation of the website. These data are not evaluated further.
Analytics: If you consent to this category, data such as IP address, location, device information, browser version and site visitor behaviour will be collected. These data are evaluated for the SNB's internal purposes and are kept for two years.
Third-party: If you consent to this category, third-party services (used, for example, to add social multimedia content to the SNB's website) will be activated which collect personal data, process these data, disclose them abroad - worldwide - and place cookies. The relevant data protection regulations are linked in the 'Privacy statement for the website of the Swiss National Bank'.

Choose your preferred settings:

This website uses cookies, analytics tools and other technologies to provide requested features, content and services, to personalise the content shown, to provide links to social media, and to analyse the use of the website in anonymised form for the purposes of improving usability. Personal data are also disclosed abroad - worldwide - to video service providers and the analytics tools of these providers are used. More information is available under 'Manage settings'.