The impact of gunfire on residential property values

Hedonic studies of housing unit prices routinely attribute lower prices to perceived undesirable attributes and or amenities of the property sold. A steady stream of literature finds that criminal behaviour is negatively capitalized into housing unit prices. This study focuses on the effects of geocoded gunfire incidents on housing unit prices while controlling for other attributes and amenities at the census-block group level. The primary finding is that spatial and temporal proximity of gunfire incidents reduces housing unit prices in an analysis of 3,844 gunfire incidents, involving over 15,000 rounds of gunfire and 2,053 housing unit sales in Savannah, Georgia, from 2015 to 2020. The effect of gunfire is greater when it occurs in the immediate vicinity of the property. Heterogeneous effects on sale prices were found to be present across time and space when intensity was measured by the number of days with gunfire incidents and to a lesser extent when intensity was measured by the number of shots fired in each incident.