Prices of Peers: Identifying Endogenous Price Effects in the Housing Market

Abstract

Abstract The paper identifies neighbourhood price spillovers in the housing market. Although this concept has attracted some theoretical research and is strongly supported by practitioners, it has proven very difficult to show in empirical data. By using the linear-in-means model, which is routinely applied to identify endogenous effects in groups of peers, the study summarises all threats to identification and demonstrates how they can be addressed by exploiting information asymmetry between buyers of different houses and delays in revealing transaction prices. The results show that a 1% increase in the price of a house increases the house price of its neighbour by up to 0.3%.