| The presence of a college or university in a community can be a source of great pride and economic vitality. An institution's presence, however, may also generate unintended off-site impacts, such as traffic congestion, inadequate parking, heightened crime, insufficient taxable property, and deteriorating neighborhoods, which strain local infrastructure and services. The vast majority of studies that investigate the economic impact of universities broadly assess and measure an institution's impacts within a large metropolitan context on the basis of regional economic development, human capital development, and expenditure.;Very little, however, is known in terms of whether and to what degree a college or university impacts local property values on a housing unit level. As colleges and universities begin to play a greater role in physically shaping their surrounding communities, greater attention must be taken to understand the fiscal consequences and impacts of on- and off-site developments on surrounding property values. By understanding what factors impact housing values, town-gown tensions can be better mitigated.;This study empirically examines the impacts of higher education institutions on local property values using a hedonic-pricing model across four sites in Maricopa County, Arizona. This study examines variables used in comparable studies employing hedonic analysis, such as real estate transactions and characteristics at the housing unit level, sale price and physical characteristics of each house, block group level census data on income and racial characteristics, environmental data, and neighborhood characteristics. This study includes a combination of analytical models (classical and spatial error) and techniques incorporating Geographic Information System (GIS) functions to measure the distance of single-family houses to the selected campus site.;The study also uses a difference-in-difference analysis to determine whether the impact of university sites on local property values changes over time. The difference-indifference approach estimates the difference between prices of properties in the area surrounding the institution and the price of comparable properties that are outside the designated area. The analysis then examines whether the extent of this difference has changed over time and whether this change is the result of institutional development. |
