Immediate and longer-term housing market effects of a major U.S. airport closure

Author / Creator

Cohen, Jeffrey P

Available as

Online

Summary

A busy airport's closure has large effects on noise, real estate markets, and neighborhood demographics. Using a unique dataset, we examine the effects of closing Denver's Stapleton Airport on near...

A busy airport's closure has large effects on noise, real estate markets, and neighborhood demographics. Using a unique dataset, we examine the effects of closing Denver's Stapleton Airport on nearby housing markets. We find evidence of immediate anticipatory price effects upon announcement, but no price changes at closing and little evidence of upward trending prices between announcement and closing. However, after the airport closure, more higher-income and fewer black households moved in, and developers built higher quality houses. Finally, post-closing, these demographic and housing stock changes had substantial housing price effects, even after restricting the sample to pre-existing housing sales.

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