شالوده شکنی اثرات سرریز اموال بلاتکلیف:بررسی اثرات خانه های خالی، مالیات بر تخلف و املاک وام شده در زیر بازارهای مسکن

In this empirical analysis, we estimate the impacts of property-tax delinquency, vacancy, and foreclosures on the value of neighboring homes. We demonstrate that these externalities differ in high- and low-poverty submarkets. Numerous studies have estimated the externality of foreclosures. These papers theorize that the foreclosure impact works partially through creating vacant and neglected homes. To our knowledge, this is only the second attempt to estimate the impact of vacancy itself and the first to use tax-delinquency as a measure of property neglect. We link vacancy observations from Postal Service data with property-tax delinquency and sales data from Cuyahoga County, Ohio. We find that an additional property within 500 ft that is vacant or delinquent reduces a home’s selling price by 1 to 2%. In low-poverty submarkets, the negative impact of a home that is both vacant and delinquent is −4.6%. Low-poverty submarkets penalize a sale near a tax-current recent foreclosure by 4 to 8%. In high-poverty submarkets, we observe positive correlations of sale prices with vacant foreclosures. This may reflect lenders selectively foreclosing only on relatively well-maintained properties.

Recent events in housing markets are attracting much scholarly attention to distressed properties. One rapidly developing line of research focuses on the externalities associated with foreclosure, primarily a foreclosed home’s impact on surrounding properties. This study addresses two questions that build on this literature. Do other undesirable statuses, specifically vacancy and tax delinquency, also impose a negative externality on nearby home values? Are these negative externalities different in high-poverty and low-poverty neighborhoods? Foreclosure sales are easily identified in county recorder or court records, so many studies have been conducted on the impact of foreclosures. Often these studies are motivated by suggesting that the foreclosed properties are frequently vacant, abandoned, and blighted. However, in weaker housing markets, foreclosed homes are a small (and declining) fraction of vacant and neglected properties. Not all foreclosed homes are vacant or neglected, so foreclosure is not a good measure of these conditions. A few distressed-property studies have incorporated measures of vacancy, but these have been limited by the relative unavailability of timely, parcel-level vacancy data (Mikelbank, 2008 and Hartley, 2010). This analysis introduces a direct parcel-level measure of vacancy and uses property-tax delinquency as a measure of neglect. We begin with administrative data maintained by Cuyahoga County, Ohio. These data include addresses, sales transactions, property-tax delinquencies and building characteristics. We use the U.S. Postal Service’s (USPS) administrative records to identify the vacancy status of every address in our data, as of the end of each month. To the authors’ knowledge, this is the first study to use property-tax delinquency as an objective indicator of neglect. The vacancy and delinquency measures are used in conjunction with foreclosure observations to disentangle the impact of these conditions on the value of neighboring properties. The existing literature has attempted to estimate distressed-property externalities using sales observations that are pooled across large cities, counties or states. This obscures important differences between the widely varied housing markets within a metropolitan area. In high-poverty areas, we find positive relationships between foreclosures and neighboring home values. This could arise from mortgage holders selectively foreclosing only on homes in relatively good condition. Pooling high-poverty observations with low-poverty observations hides the large negative impact of foreclosures that are measurable in mid-to-upper income areas. Similarly, pooled estimates obscure the large negative impact from homes that are both vacant and delinquent in low-poverty areas. In this analysis, we arrive at different estimates of the externalities in these submarkets by evaluating the model using separate data from high- and low-poverty areas. The rest of the paper proceeds as follows. In Section 2, we discuss types of property distress and their relationship to one another. Section 3 reviews the relevant literature. In Section 4, we discuss the empirical models we will use in estimating the externalities. Section 5 describes the data, and Section 6 presents the results. In Section 7, we discuss policy implications of our findings. Section 8 concludes.

Using our unique data on parcel-level vacancies, and incorporating tax-delinquency data, we have a richer understanding of the impact of distressed properties. An additional vacant home within 500 ft reduces a home’s sale price by 1.1% in a low-poverty neighborhood. An additional tax-delinquent property nearby reduces the sale price by 2%, and this negative externality jumps to 4.6% if the property is both vacant and delinquent. In all areas, delinquent homes are two to three times more common than vacancies, which makes the aggregate effect of delinquent homes greater. The impact of foreclosures is more complex than previous studies suggested. In low-poverty tracts, we find negative impacts of 4.2 to 7.5% if the property is tax-current. In high-poverty areas, vacant foreclosures are positively correlated with home sale prices. This could reflect selective foreclosure by lenders on homes that are in better condition. As the foreclosure crisis recedes into the past, municipalities and community organizations will have to move beyond focusing on foreclosed homes to deal with property distress. In high-poverty areas, tax delinquency appears to be a promising measure for identifying properties that are dragging down neighboring property values. Future research should further probe this measure to see if long-term or high-dollar tax delinquencies could be used to focus housing-market interventions. In lowpoverty areas, combining vacancy and tax-delinquency data can identify distressed properties that cause a negative externality almost as large as the externality from a foreclosure. Targeting vacant-delinquent homes for code enforcement or ehabilitation assistance could make a major contribution to maintaining property values.