Home Values and Crime in Los Angeles County: Rethinking Space and Time

• In Event: Housing, Housing Policy, and Neighborhood Crime Rates

Abstract

The relationship between home values and crime in neighborhoods is an important one and may provide insight into commonly theorized mechanisms on crime such as residential stability, gentrification, or segregation. One causal direction in this relationship is the effect of crime on home values, and studies that have focused on this question have typically been limited in their ability to measure crime in a spatially precise manner. As a consequence, studies assessing the impact of crime on housing values often measure crime at the Census tract level. This study uses data that is more spatially and temporally precise to examine the relationship between crime and home sales prices in Los Angeles County, California in 2010. Using Zillow data and crime data at the block level, this study shows how crime in the local block and the broader area surrounding that block affect home sales prices at the micro-spatial level. It also tests how changes in the level of crime impact housing sales prices. The study will examine differences in violent and property crimes and will speak to local housing market changes in Los Angeles County. Building on traditional hedonic pricing regression analyses, the current study considers the influence of neighborhood socio-demographic characteristics and characteristics such as institutions, businesses, and property land use. This study bridges hedonic analyses with neighborhood effects and crime research to more fully examine how crime and housing are related.

Author

• Michelle D Mioduszewski, University of California, Irvine