Coastal development moratoria and housing prices

Abstract

This article draws upon event study methodology typically employed in the field of empirical finance to explore the impact of a development moratorium on housing prices in Los Angeles County. Time-series analysis is employed to examine hedonic price-series, return-series, and cumulative returns for prototypical housing units by geographic location and housing type based on ex ante hypotheses about the relative impact of a coastal development moratorium on the market segments that these price and return data represent. In particular, housing prices, returns, and cumulative returns inside and outside the impacted area are examined as are the same measures for housing segmented by age and density. Housing prices in the impacted area experience a significant sustained increase of 6.8 percent and a 10.9 percent spike as of the event date relative to housing prices outside the area. Perhaps more convincing is a cumulative increase in relative returns of over 26 percent in the impacted area versus the inland area during the 22 months prior to the event date. The difference in returns is not significant after the event date. Consistent results are found for properties segmented by age and density. Application of this approach depends on the availability of large volumes of transactions to permit the construction of price-series and return-series in the market segments suggested by the research design.