After the Boom: Transitory and Legacy Effects of Foreclosures

Foreclosures lead to lower house prices in the short run. However, whether or not foreclosures also have long-run or legacy price effects has not been addressed extensively. Do neighborhoods with a greater number of past foreclosures exhibit long lasting house price discounts? This paper examines both transitory and legacy foreclosure price effects. We use almost 20 years of data from one of the epicenters of the foreclosure crisis: Orange County, Florida. We measure the number of recent and past foreclosures within narrowly defined neighborhoods for each house sold during 2016–2019:Q2. We compare transaction prices with different numbers of recent and past foreclosures, while controlling for differences in observed property characteristics and taking measures to reduce the impact of unobserved heterogeneity. We find that greater numbers of recent and past foreclosures are associated with lower house prices. We find strong transitory effects consistent with the existing literature. We also find significant but modest legacy effects on surrounding prices. These long-run discounts are about 0.41 percent to 0.79 percent in Orange County, Florida.