Housing Market Spillovers: Evidence from the End of Rent Control in Cambridge, Massachusetts

We measure the capitalization of housing market externalities into residential housing values by studying the unanticipated elimination of stringent rent controls in Cambridge, Massachusetts, in 1995. Pooling data on the universe of assessed values and transacted prices of Cambridge residential prop...

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Bibliographic Details
Main Authors: Autor, David H. (Contributor), Palmer, Christopher John (Contributor), Pathak, Parag (Contributor)
Other Authors: Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Department of Economics (Contributor)
Format: Article
Language:English
Published: University of Chicago Press, 2016-08-30T21:14:33Z.
Subjects:
Online Access:Get fulltext
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100 1 0 |a Autor, David H.  |e author 
100 1 0 |a Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Department of Economics  |e contributor 
100 1 0 |a Autor, David H.  |e contributor 
100 1 0 |a Palmer, Christopher John  |e contributor 
100 1 0 |a Pathak, Parag  |e contributor 
700 1 0 |a Palmer, Christopher John  |e author 
700 1 0 |a Pathak, Parag  |e author 
700 1 0 |a Pathak, Parag  |e author 
245 0 0 |a Housing Market Spillovers: Evidence from the End of Rent Control in Cambridge, Massachusetts 
260 |b University of Chicago Press,   |c 2016-08-30T21:14:33Z. 
856 |z Get fulltext  |u http://hdl.handle.net/1721.1/104081 
520 |a We measure the capitalization of housing market externalities into residential housing values by studying the unanticipated elimination of stringent rent controls in Cambridge, Massachusetts, in 1995. Pooling data on the universe of assessed values and transacted prices of Cambridge residential properties between 1988 and 2005, we find that rent decontrol generated substantial, robust price appreciation at decontrolled units and nearby never-controlled units, accounting for a quarter of the $7.8 billion in Cambridge residential property appreciation during this period. The majority of this contribution stems from induced appreciation of never-controlled properties. Residential investment explains only a small fraction of the total. 
520 |a Alfred P. Sloan Foundation 
520 |a Lincoln Institute of Land Policy 
520 |a National Science Foundation (U.S.) (grant SES-962572) 
546 |a en_US 
655 7 |a Article 
773 |t Journal of Political Economy