Tuesday 21 May 2024 12:55 - 14:00

This event is both online and in person

SAL 2.04, 2nd Floor Conference Room, Sir Arthur Lewis Building, LSE, 32 Lincoln's Inn Fields, London WC2A 3PH

About this event

Since the Great Recession, the traditional path to wealth creation through home ownership has stalled and worsened for many minority households. One potential and largely unexplored driver of this trend is the growing presence of institutional investors, who often purchase single-family homes and convert them to permanent rentals. We find that large institutional investors alone have decreased homeownership rates in Black neighborhoods in high growth southern cities like Charlotte, North Carolina by 4%. Using a granular spatial difference-in-differences estimator, we show that an institutional investor purchase leads to a 2% decline in neighboring property values. This effect is almost exclusively limited to majority Black suburban neighborhoods. These property value declines are also associated with commonly hypothesized social spillovers from the loss of homeownership, namely increases in crime and decreases in property maintenance and political participation.

Participants are expected to adhere to the CEP Events Code of Conduct.

Directions

This event will take place in SAL 2.04, 2nd Floor Conference Room, Sir Arthur Lewis Building, LSE, 32 Lincoln's Inn Fields, London WC2A 3PH.

Labour Markets Workshops are part of the CEP's Labour Markets programme.