Jeffrey P. Cohen, Ph.D.
Kinnard Scholar in Real Estate and Professor University of Connecticut
- Storrs CT
Jeffrey P. Cohen is an expert on transit-oriented development and housing, factors impacting real estate values, and property taxation
Biography
From 2001-2020 he had been a frequent visiting scholar with the research division of the St. Louis Fed. From January 2024 to December 2025, he is a Visiting Research Fellow at the Federal Reserve Bank of Boston’s Regional & Community Outreach department. He was a Senior Research Fellow at Saint Louis University from 2021 to 2024. Professor Cohen has been a visiting researcher at the RWI-Leibnitz Institute for Economic Research in Essen, Germany since 2017. Since 2020, he has been a Fellow with the Homer Hoyt Institute for Real Estate and Land Economics.
Professor Cohen’s current research interests include transit oriented development and housing; examining the impacts on real estate wealth from interstate highway construction; natural disasters and real estate; stormwater infrastructure, renewable energy, and real estate; the impacts of airports, airport noise and other transportation noise on property values; property taxation; land value estimation; housing price spillovers across jurisdictions; and the relationships between substance use disorder treatment provider operating costs and urban economic issues (such as transit and housing).
Among over 50 peer-reviewed journal publications, he has published his research in several top journals, including: Review of Economics and Statistics, Journal of Urban Economics, Journal of Regional Science, Regional Science and Urban Economics, Journal of Real Estate Finance and Economics, Journal of Real Estate Research, Real Estate Economics, Transportation Research Part D: Transport and Environment; Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis Review; and others.
He has previous teaching experience at Tufts University, the University of Maryland at College Park, the University of Toronto, and the University of Hartford. Professor Cohen has also worked full-time at the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency as part of an award from the National Academies; and has been a Fellow with and a seminar organizer for the Lincoln Institute of Land Policy. He also has previous full-time employment experience in the private sector as a Senior Economist at Standard & Poor’s.
Areas of Expertise
Education
University of Maryland at College Park
Ph.D.
Economics
1998
University of Toronto
M.A.
Economics
1993
Tufts University
B.S.
Quantitative Economics
1992
Accomplishments
Distinguished Member Award, Transportation and Public Utilities Group of the American Economic Association
Awarded in 2017
Social
Media
Media Appearances
Homeownership trends: New data shows areas of concerns in CT
NBC Connecticut tv
2023-12-01
For starters, overall home ownership in Connecticut went down in the decade between the 2010 and the 2020 census -anywhere from down roughly 1% in Windham County, to homeownership dropping almost 5% in Fairfield County.
We asked Jeffrey Cohen, UConn Business School professor of real estate, for his take.
“2020 was a period that was the beginning of the pandemic and there was lots of supply chain issues that disrupted new construction. And all of this can lead to a housing shortage that keeps prices high and makes it difficult for people to purchase houses," Cohen said.
Looking for a house in CT? Here’s why so few are for sale and there’s no big building boom
Hartford Courant print
2023-08-07
Last week, mortgage giant Freddie Mac reported that nationally the average rate for a 30-year, fixed-rate home loan was 6.9%, up from last week when it averaged 6.81%. A year ago, the 30-year fixed-rate mortgage averaged 4.99%.
“And that’s putting home buying out of reach for a lot of people,” Jeffrey P. Cohen, a professor of finance and real estate at the University of Connecticut in Storrs, said. “And a lot of people are turning to apartments for longer than they had hoped for or longer than they expected.”
Why a criminology prof wants addiction clinics within 500m of major transit hubs
CBC Radio radio
2023-04-01
Jeffrey Cohen, a professor at the University of Connecticut's School of Business, has been researching the benefits of bringing addiction and mental health treatment facilities near public transit routes. His research project ran between 2013 and 2018 is currently a working paper under peer review.
His team looked at a rapid bus transit line connecting four towns in Connecticut, including the state capital of Hartford.
"What we're finding is that there's this significant relationship between being close to these new transit start ups … and costs, operating costs are significantly less," said Cohen.
Looking to buy a house in Greater Hartford? Choices are few; these are the 10 towns and cities that have the most for sale.
Hartford Courant print
2023-01-30
Jeffrey P. Cohen, a professor of finance and real estate at the University of Connecticut in Storrs, said new data from the Federal Reserve Bank of Boston shows that today’s home sale prices, when adjusted for inflation — the general overall rise in prices — are generally not higher than they were in 1991.
Cohen also noted that price increases are evidence of Connecticut catching up in price recovery. That’s something that most parts of the country experienced sooner after the Great Recession of 2008 and 2009 but eluded Connecticut until the pandemic struck, Cohen said.
The heat is on: 7 things to know about Greater Hartford’s summer home sale market
Hartford Courant print
2022-07-24
Jeffrey P. Cohen, interim director of the Center for Real Estate and Urban Economic Studies at the University of Connecticut in Storrs, said he sees the combination of relative housing affordability in Connecticut and and an overall housing shortage across many regions of the country as an upside to home sales in Connecticut.
“And so, I don’t see a big crash in housing prices in Connecticut in the near future,” Cohen, a professor of finance and economics at UConn, said, “You might see a slight correction or slight adjustment. But in at least the next six to 12 months, I see the housing market remaining fairly strong in Connecticut.”
How proximity to CT highways affects home values and divides communities
Hearst Connecticut Media print
2022-07-14
The proximity to highways affects home value in Connecticut, and those benefits are largely drawn along racial lines, according to a study from researchers at the University of Connecticut.
The United States interstate system was built between 1940 and 1960, cutting right through and destroying some existing communities and creating value for others, according to Jeffrey Cohen, Kinnard scholar in real estate and a professor of finance at the University of Connecticut School of Business.
Analyst: CT real estate market could reach ‘unsustainable’ level. How is it affecting renters and buyers?
Hearst Connecticut Media print
2022-04-15
A series of factors is pushing the Connecticut real estate market so high that it’s excluding many renters and buyers, according to one analyst.
“If you don't take control of that by possibly raising interest rates, then you're going to see this possibly unsustainable rise,” said Jeffrey Cohen, the Kinnard Scholar in real estate and a professor of finance at the University of Connecticut School of Business.
2 Scrappy Airline Startups Are Sparking a Unlikely War Between New Haven and Hartford Airports
Airline Weekly online
2022-03-29
Jeffrey Cohen, a finance professor at the University of Connecticut, said that historically competition between the two Connecticut airports has been limited because Tweed has had few flights. “I think Avelo will draw some passengers (to Tweed) who had been going to Bradley,” he said. “It gives more options in terms of timing and in the choice of airlines.
Cohen noted that he recently flew Avelo from New Haven to Fort Lauderdale. Tweed is “an interesting airport,” he said. A drive from Hartford uses two interstate highways, but then “You drive through a residential neighborhood, very well kept up with nice, well-manicured yards, and then all of a sudden there’s the airport."
What’s next for the real estate market?
Connecticut Magazine print
2022-03-01
But for the first few months of 2022, there probably won’t be much of a change in prices, says Jeffrey Cohen, a professor of finance at the University of Connecticut’s Center for Real Estate and Urban Economic Studies. “You might see some fluctuations, but I don’t see any dramatic increases or any dramatic decreases at least through the first half of this year,” Cohen says.
Q&A: Connecticut Sees Big Demand For Apartment Rentals
NBC Connecticut tv
2022-02-03
The real estate market in Connecticut has had big demand with homes selling at higher than list prices. But this housing boom is causing another kind of boom - a boom in the rental market.
NBC Connecticut's Dan Corcoran spoke with Jeffery Cohen, a Kinnard Scholar in real estate and professor of finance at the UConn School of Business, about the market.
How disasters — manmade or natural — affect the real estate market
Boston Globe online
2020-02-05
Because the Federal Emergency Management Agency flood maps are available to the public, many buyers understand the risk they’re taking when they buy in a documented flood plain, said Jeffrey Cohen, a University of Connecticut professor of finance and real estate.
However, as the climate warms and storms grow stronger and wetter, locations once considered safe are also getting hit — and when our expectations of risk change, home values can react in kind. Cohen is seeing that play out in his current research on New York City home prices before and after Superstorm Sandy ravaged the city in 2012.
Home Warranties Offer Buyers Protection. Just Don’t Forget the Inspection
Wall Street Journal print
2019-11-14
However, in hot markets with low inventory, offering a home warranty may be a warning sign to potential buyers, says Jeffrey P. Cohen, a professor of finance and real estate at the University of Connecticut School of Business. "If you’re in a market like New York City I would see it as a red flag that something may come up."
Even if a home warranty is included in the sale, buyers shouldn’t forgo a home inspection, Prof. Cohen says. Skipping an inspection might make your offer more competitive in a bidding war, "but you might be ignoring issues that may come up years from now. You may be hurting yourself down the road," he says.
Articles
Air Pollution and the Effects on House Prices: A Push for Sustainability
Journal of Real Estate ResearchPing Feng, Ziqi Zhou, Jeffrey P. Cohen &Mahmut Yasar
2024-05-03
Environmental sustainability has become an important issue of concern throughout many countries. Among the many sources of concern include air pollution, the effects of which are often capitalized into house prices. In this article, we focus on air pollution in the city of Changsha, China, and the impacts of new pollution regulations on the relationship between pollution exposure and house sales prices. We use the Air Quality Index (Aqi) data from 10 air quality monitoring stations in Changsha to interpolate a previous 12-month average Aqi value for each dwelling unit in the city, based on geographical location. Controlling for important house characteristics such as the living area and the distance to the nearest subway stations, we use the Blue Sky Protection Campaign action plan (BSPC) as the quasi-natural experiment to identify the causal effect of air pollution on house prices. We find dwelling units that were previously in relatively higher-polluted neighborhoods saw their values increase by about 2% after the pollution regulation was implemented, which is statistically significant. This implies China could achieve greater housing wealth for its homeowners by implementing further pollution restrictions, both in Changsha and perhaps also in other parts of the country. Other Asian countries could potentially learn from the results of this analysis.
Overlapping Real Asset Networks and Corporate Investment
SSRN Electronic JournalJeffrey Cohen, David C. Lin, Andy Naranjo, Chongyu Wang
2024-04-15
This study shows how interconnected real asset networks among corporations influence their investment decisions. We develop a theoretical model predicting that commonalities in firms’ asset networks drive higher optimal investment levels, and we empirically test these predictions using spatial econometrics and network methods. Controlling for industry and headquarters co-investments, we find a 1% increase in the instrumented asset network co-investments leads to a 0.37% increase in the typical firm’s investment rate. While prior research often proxies geographic connectivity using headquarters co-location, we show that overlapping subsidiary networks are a stronger predictor of investment spillovers. We further show that our findings are not driven by non-tradable goods and services sectors nor by firms whose subsidiary networks are tilted toward states that are expected to produce faster economic growth, ruling out alternative explanations related to localized economic conditions. Importantly, we identify a collateral channel, where firms with higher corporate real estate holdings that can be pledged as collateral for debt financing experience stronger investment effects. We find that firms’ debt issuance is similarly affected by their asset network connections, reinforcing the role of corporate real estate as a financial conduit. Our findings are robust to alternative model specifications and omitted variable concerns. Overall, this study provides new insights into how real asset networks shape the locational boundary of firms and their corporate financial policies, challenging conventional reliance on headquarters location as the primary locational determinant of peer effects in investment behavior.
Transit and treatment: Aligning systems to address substance use in Connecticut
Health Services ResearchJeffrey P. Cohen PhD, Steven Huleatt MPH, Shane Murphy PhD, Carla J. Rash PhD
2023-12-21
For providers with programs within 1-mile of new transit (compared with a “control” sample beyond 1-mile of new transit), (i) a 10% increase in clients leads to a 0.12% lower operating costs per client; (ii) a 10% increase in clients completing treatment results in a 1.5% decrease in operating costs per client; (iii) a 10% increase in clients receiving treatment for multiple services causes a 0.81% lower operating costs per client; (iv) offering multiple services leads to 6.3% lower operating costs.
New transit proximity causes operating cost savings for substance use disorder/mental health treatment providers. System alignment may benefit transit and health care sectors.
Housing Price Cycle Interdependencies and Comovement: A Markov-Switching Approach
Journal of Real Estate ResearchJeffrey Cohen, Cletus Coughlin & Daniel Soques
2023-08-30
This paper uses a Markov-switching approach to examine why there is house price cycle comovement across some U.S. metropolitan areas (MSAs) but not others, and which MSAs cluster together for each of these reasons. Past studies have attributed common housing downturns in different regions as possible explanations for comovement. We explore other channels, and find some clusters based on common industry concentration (such as information technology), house price elasticity, as well as a cluster of MSAs that are desirable for retirees (in the sun belt). We find seven clusters of MSAs, where each cluster experiences idiosyncratic house price downturns, plus one distinct national house price cycle. Notably, only the housing downturn associated with the Great Recession spread across all the MSAs in our sample; all other house price downturns remained contained to a single cluster. We also identify MSA economic and geographic characteristics that correlate with housing price cluster membership, which implies comovement due to mobility of residents. In addition, while prior research has found housing and business cycles to be related closely at the national level, we find very different house price comovement and employment comovement across clusters and across MSAs.
Do Higher House Prices Crowd-Out or Crowd-In Manufacturing? A Spatial Econometrics Approach
The Journal of Real Estate Finance and EconomicsPing Feng, Mahmut Yasar & Jeffrey P. Cohen
2023-07-07
This paper examines the hypothesis that higher house prices lead to greater manufacturing concentration in Chinese cities. There are several innovations in our work, such as allowing for feedback and spillover effects across cities via using spatial panel data models. We also address the endogeneity of house prices with a difference-in-differences approach that relies on house purchase restrictions imposed by some local governments that vary across cities and time, which limit the number of homes residents can purchase, and with an instrumental variables approach. Across various model specifications, we find robust evidence of significant crowding-in of manufacturing firms when house prices rise. This crowding-in impact tends to be dampened in cities with house purchase restrictions in effect. Our direct, indirect, and total effects of house price changes on manufacturing concentration imply significant feedback and spillover effects across cities when a city’s house prices change and when a city experiences a house purchase restriction. These findings have important potential policy implications for real estate markets when local policymakers want to increase their city’s manufacturing concentration. These include offering subsidies and/or other incentives for homeownership, and discouraging house purchase restriction policies by the local governments.
Longer‐term housing market effects of a major U.S. airport closure
Real Estate EconomicsJeffrey P. Cohen, Cletus C. Coughlin, Jonas Crews, Stephen L. Ross
2023-03-11
Using a unique dataset, we examine various effects of closing Denver's Stapleton Airport, and subsequent redevelopment, on nearby housing markets. We find immediate anticipatory price effects upon announcement, but no price changes at closing and little evidence of upward trending prices between announcement and closing. Post-closure, more higher income and fewer Black households moved in, and developers built larger houses on larger lots. Increases in the price of pre-existing housing are also found. Finally, we find that post-closing price increases were largest in areas that were closest to the center of new commercial development and that had greater exposure to new housing construction.
Geographically Overlapping Real Estate Assets, Liquidity Spillovers, and Liquidity Multiplier Effects
The Journal of Real Estate Finance and EconomicsChongyu Wang, Jeffrey P. Cohen & John L. Glascock
2022-04-08
When liquidity providers for one asset obtain information from other asset prices, this may magnify the (upward or downward) comovement of asset liquidity. It also may yield an illiquidity multiplier (Cespa and Foucault, Review of Financial Studies, 27(6), 1615–1660, 2014). We empirically test the magnitude of this illiquidity multiplier for a sample of U.S. equity real estate investment trusts (REITs) using spatial autoregressive models (Zhu and Milcheva, Journal of Real Estate Finance and Economics, 61(3), 443–475, 2018). We find significant liquidity spillovers among REITs with geographically overlapping real estate holdings. Our findings suggest that the multiplier effect impacts neighboring REITs through cross-asset learning about firm fundamentals. This effect is stronger during market turmoil, after the Decimalization (a source of exogenous variation), and for REITs headquartered in MSAs with less information asymmetry.
Continuation of air services at Berlin‐Tegel and its effects on apartment rental prices
Real Estate EconomicsPhilipp Breidenbach, Jeffrey Cohen, Sandra Schaffner
2022-04-23
Berlin-Brandenburg airport (BER) became well-known far beyond German borders due to substantial planning problems and multiple opening delays. Originally planned to open in March 2012, BER finally opened in 2020, after seven delay announcements. Focusing on the two most surprising and meaningful announcements, these unexpected delays form an exogeneous shock for residents surrounding the largest existing airport, Berlin-Tegel, which was expected to close immediately upon opening of BER. We use these delay announcements as a quasi-experiment to analyze separately the effects on apartment rental prices of aircraft noise (due to arriving/departing flight paths) and airport proximity (accessibility). The results suggest there is a negative effect of aircraft noise on rental prices of 2%–5%, while there are positive proximity effects from Berlin-Tegel of 1%–3%. We consider heterogeneity using quantile regression and find the negative noise effects are larger for higher priced apartments. We disentangle aircraft noise and other (environmental) noise effects, and herein find that aircraft noise lowers property values by 2%–2.8%, while properties facing additional environmental noise experience a separate 1.7% decrease. In a joint model of noise and proximity, we observe the proximity benefits and the noise externalities essentially cancel each other out.
The Impact of the Coronavirus Pandemic on New York City Real Estate: First Evidence
Journal of Regional ScienceJeffrey P. Cohen, Felix L. Friedt, Jackson P. Lautier
2022-03-09
We investigate whether pandemic-induced contagion disamenities and income effects arising due to COVID-related unemployment adversely affected real estate prices of one- or two-family owner-occupied properties across New York City (NYC). First, ordinary least squares hedonic results indicate that greater COVID case numbers are concentrated in neighborhoods with lower-valued properties. Second, we use a repeat-sales approach for the period 2003–2020, and we find that both the possibility of contagion and pandemic-induced income effects adversely impacted home sale prices. Estimates suggest sale prices fell by roughly $60,000 or around 8% in response to both of the following: 1000 additional infections per 100,000 residents and a 10-percentage point increase in unemployment in a given Modified Zip Code Tabulation Area (MODZCTA). These price effects were more pronounced during the second wave of infections. On the basis of cumulative MODZCTA infection rates through 2020, the estimated COVID-19 price discount ranged from approximately 1% to 50% in the most affected neighborhoods, and averaged 14%. The contagion effect intensified in the more affluent, but less densely populated NYC neighborhoods, while the income effect was more pronounced in the most densely populated neighborhoods with more rental properties and greater population shares of foreign-born residents. This disparity implies the pandemic may have been correlated with a wider gap in housing wealth in NYC between homeowners in lower-priced and higher-priced neighborhoods.
Perception vs. reality: The aviation noise complaint effect on home prices
Transportation ResearchFelix L. Friedt, Jeffrey P. Cohen
2021-11-01
Intercity air transportation has grown rapidly in recent decades and creates significant noise pollution that affects health. Previous research quantifies the losses that are capitalized into home values. Much research relies heavily on spatially restrictive noise contour plots to identify the house price discounts and determine economic damages. We break new ground by investigating whether residential noise complaints can offer insights on aircraft noise pollution and housing price impacts experienced by residents near Minneapolis-Saint-Paul International Airport outside of contour boundaries. Our findings indicate noise complaints are a reliable measure of residential noise annoyance and have a significant adverse effect on home prices extending nearly twice as far (10 km) as contours. Reevaluating economic damages based on our results indicates contour-based calculations severely underestimate aircraft-noise-pollution-induced losses incurred by homeowners and suggests $154 million of $167 million in post-abatement damages are borne by residents located outside the regulated Minneapolis contour area.
1960s Interstate Highways and Homeowner Wealth Distribution
Federal Reserve Bank of St. LouisJeffrey P. Cohen , Nicholas Lownes , Bo Zhang
2021-10-21
This article studies house-level real estate wealth distribution changes nearby a major interstate highway, comparing values before the announcement of the highway's construction (1940) with those during and shortly after the construction period (1961-74). We also develop Lorenz curves to examine the distribution of housing wealth among various demographic groups of homeowners. First, we find that properties at least a half-mile away from I-84 experienced statistically significant appreciation (on average). Houses further away, in 0.25 mile increments up to 1.25 miles, appreciated less. Our Lorenz curves exhibit a small inequitable distribution of wealth gains among all homeowners experiencing appreciation. But there was a large inequitable distribution of wealth losses among homeowners whose houses depreciated in value during and after construction compared with 1940 (pre-announcement). The Lorenz curves imply that, for the 10th percentile of homes with wealth increases, the majority-White-population Census tracts experienced over 25 percent higher house price appreciation than the majority-Black-population Census tracts. Finally, we observe that approximately 0.5 percent of the houses in our 1940 Census sample of around 2,500 homes had a Black homeowner.
Storm Surges, Informational Shocks, and the Price of Urban Real Estate: An Application to the Case of Hurricane Sandy
Regional Science and Urban EconomicsJeffrey P. Cohen, Jason Barr
2021-09-01
The impacts of a major hurricane on residential real estate can be devastating. Hurricane Sandy in New York City (NYC) is among the examples of how flooding can unexpectedly extend beyond FEMA flood zones. Such surprises or negative shocks can provide property owners—especially those not flooded—with new information about future flood risks, based on the difference of the property distance from the mapped flood zone and the distance to the actual locations of flooding. We use a difference-in-differences approach to quantify the effects of these shocks on residential property values for non-flooded NYC properties after Sandy. The short-run negative “surprise” effect was to lower NYC housing prices by about 6%–7% for each mile (or about 2% per standard deviation) difference between the property distance from the flood zone and the distance to the actual locations of flooding. The corresponding positive “surprise” effect is insignificant. The long-term surprise effects of flood risk on housing prices tend to disappear, as residents’ memories of the surprise fade and they seem to only recall the actual storm surge several years after the hurricane.
Are Estimates of Rapid Growth in Urban Land Values an Artifact of the Land Residual Model?
The Journal of Real Estate Finance and EconomicsJohn M. Clapp, Jeffrey P. Cohen, Thies Lindenthal
2021-08-07
Separating urban land and structure values is important for national accounts and for analysis of real estate risk over time. A large part of the literature on urban land valuation uses the land residual method, which relies on the assumption that structures are easily replaced. But urban land value depends on accessibility to nearby land uses, implying that infrastructure and the slowly changing built environment are the most important components of land value. Investments in structures are only slowly reversible, implying that land and structure function as a bundled good whereas land residual theory severs the connection between land value and structure value over time. We develop a simple theoretical model that includes option value and compare to a nested land residual model before and after a shock to values. Cross-sectionally our model shows that land residual theory overestimates structure value. Over time almost all of any change in property value is allocated to land residuals. Data from Maricopa county, AZ, 2012–2018 strongly support option value models when nested within a general model that also includes land residuals. FHFA estimates use entirely different cost estimation methods: our analysis of FHA data suggest that our conclusions generalize to the U.S. as a whole, and that high and rising land value ratios over 50 years (the “hockey stick” pattern found in the literature) are likely an artifact of the residual model.
Valuation of Noise Pollution and Abatement Policy: Evidence from the Minneapolis-St. Paul International Airport
Land EconomicsFelix L. Friedt and Jeffrey P. Cohen
2021-02-01
Aircraft noise pollution has adverse physical and mental health effects that are capitalized in the affected home values. We contribute to the literature estimating these noise discounts by our novel identification strategy that analyzes the “treatment effect” of two local government subsidized soundproofing initiatives near the Minneapolis-Saint Paul International Airport. Combining a repeat-sales sample with data on aircraft noise pollution (1990–2014), we find a causal noise discount of around $25,000 per sale of noise-affected, but abatement-ineligible, properties, whereas abatement-eligible homes experience a negligible effect post soundproofing indicating a return on abatement investments as a high as 40% in Minneapolis.
Measuring Household Distress and Potential Policy Impacts
The Federal Reserve Bank of St. LouisJeffrey P. Cohen, Cletus Couglin, William R. Emmons, Jacob Haas
2021-01-01
Anecdotal evidence suggests many households are struggling to meet their financial obligations (e.g., making loan payments). Yet housing markets and consumer spending have been strong, and personal bankruptcies and mortgage foreclosures are at multiyear lows.
Expansive government policies that include income support, extended unemployment insurance, low interest rates, and relief from default or foreclosure may help explain low levels of reported distress. However, a major concern is that current policy measures are simply postponing rather than eliminating the household distress.
The Bargaining and Contagion Effects of Investors in Single Family Residential Properties: The Case of Denver Colorado
The Journal of Real Estate Finance and EconomicsJeffrey P. Cohen, John P. Harding
2020-06-10
We study the bargaining power of investors and the contagion effects of investor-owned single family homes on nearby property values. By controlling for the characteristics of both buyers and sellers, we find that investors tend to have more bargaining power than owner-occupiers — they purchase at lower prices and sell at higher prices, all else equal. We identify two types of investors: Professional Investors (e.g., corporations and partnerships) and Individual Investors. We find differences in the behavior of these two types of investors. For example, Individual Investors tend to invest in homes similar in terms of unobserved quality to those purchased by owner-occupiers. The tendency to buy lower quality homes is primarily attributable to Professional Investors. We also find that Professional Investors have more bargaining power than Individual Investors. For the contagion analysis, we use a repeat sales methodology and find that increasing ownership by investors in a neighborhood is associated with a small positive effect on nearby property values.
Time-Geographically Weighted Regressions and Residential Property Value Assessment
The Journal of Real Estate Finance and EconomicsJeffrey P. Cohen, Cletus C. Coughlin & Jeffrey Zabel
2019-07-24
In this study, we develop and apply a new methodology for obtaining accurate and equitable property value assessments. This methodology adds a time dimension to the Geographically Weighted Regressions (GWR) framework, which we call Time-Geographically Weighted Regressions (TGWR). That is, when generating assessed values, we consider sales that are close in time and space to the designated unit. We think this is an important improvement of GWR since this increases the number of comparable sales that can be used to generate assessed values. Furthermore, it is likely that units that sold at an earlier time but are spatially near the designated unit are likely to be closer in value than units that are sold at a similar time but farther away geographically. This is because location is such an important determinant of house value. We apply this new methodology to sales data for residential properties in 50 municipalities in Connecticut for 1994–2013 and 145 municipalities in Massachusetts for 1987–2012. This allows us to compare results over a long time period and across municipalities in two states. We find that TGWR performs better than OLS with fixed effects and leads to less regressive assessed values than OLS. In many cases, TGWR performs better than GWR that ignores the time dimension. In at least one specification, several suburban and rural towns meet the IAAO Coefficient of Dispersion cutoffs for acceptable accuracy.
Traffic Noise in Georgia: Sound Levels and Inequality
Journal of Housing Economics2019
Using Lorenz-type curves, means tests, ordinary least squares, and locally weighted regressions (LWR), we examine the relative burdens of whites, blacks, and Hispanics in Georgia from road and air traffic noise. We find that whites bear less noise than either blacks or Hispanics and that blacks tend to experience more traffic noise than Hispanics. While every Metropolitan Statistical Area (MSA) showed that blacks experienced relatively more noise than average, such a result did not hold for Hispanics in roughly half of the MSAs.
