Scandinavian Working Papers in Economics

Working Paper Series,
Royal Institute of Technology, Department of Real Estate and Construction Management & Banking and Finance

No 13/10: Challenging the idyll: Does crime affect property prices in small towns?

Vania Ceccato () and Mats Wilhelmsson ()
Additional contact information
Vania Ceccato: Centre for Banking and Finance, Postal: Centre for Banking and Finance, Royal Institute of Technology, Brinellvägen 1, 100 44 Stockholm, Sweden
Mats Wilhelmsson: Centre for Banking and Finance, Postal: Centre for Banking and Finance, Royal Institute of Technology, Brinellvägen 1, 100 44 Stockholm, Sweden

Abstract: This article reports on testing the effect of residential burglary on the housing market in a relatively small Swedish town using data on sales in 2005 and 2011. This assessment is important since the international evidence is dominated by studies based on large urban areas. The study employs different strategies of hedonic price modelling to estimate the impact of crime while controlling for property and neighbourhood characteristics; in particular, it explores the use of quantile regression. Geographic Information System (GIS) is used to combine apartment sales data with residential burglaries, land use characteristics and demographic data. Findings show that residential burglary has a significant negative effect on property prices in 2011 but no impact in 2005. Results also show that the effect of housing characteristics on apartment prices can be explained more in detail by estimating quantile regression models across price categories than using traditional modelling strategies.

Keywords: Residential burglary; apartment prices; hedonic modelling; quantile regression; GIS

JEL-codes: R21; R32

21 pages, August 23, 2013

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WP201310.pdf PDF-file 

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