Is there an additional price premium for single-family houses exposed to urban parks? Insights from causal spatio-temporal matching in Québec city.

Abstract

Urban parks and green spaces are known for providing positive social and environmental services, which is usually capitalized into real estate prices. While positive externalities extend at the neighbourhood level, negative externalities can be detected close to the infrastructures, making the price premium varying locally for houses exposed. The paper investigates if local price premium for exposition to different types of parks differ between houses connected or adjacent to parks compared to other houses located nearby but not directly exposed. For that purpose, a spatio-temporal propensity score matching identification strategy is proposed and applied on single-family house transactions in Québec City between 2004 and 2020. The estimation results show that, except for two specific situations, direct exposition does not necessarily translate in significant additional house price premiums. However, a complementary quantile analysis suggests that the non-significant mean differential price premium hides an important spatial dimension, pointing to the presence of environmental inequities.