Short-Term Own-Price and Spillover Effects of Distressed Residential Properties: The Case of a Housing Crash

Most previous empirical studies of price spillover effects of foreclosure on no-default transactions are based on data from a stable housing-market period. This study uses transactions for 2008 from a housing market with a relatively large number of real estate owned (REO) sales/foreclosures. The overall results indicate that: (1) REO and in the process of foreclosure properties have the same spillover effects, but short sales do not produce a spillover effect; (2) models that control for the overall market trend produce smaller spillover effects; (3) the marginal effect of an REO is 1%; (4) the cumulative effects of multiple distressed neighbors can be as severe as 8%; and (5) excluding transactions of homes that were sold under distress from the sample increases the estimated marginal spillover effect to about 2% and the cumulative effects to about 21%.