Refugees and apartment prices: a case study to investigate the attitudes of home buyers

We evaluate the price development of apartments in neighborhoods surrounding temporary housing for refugees in the year after an unpredicted announcement of building sites, targeting refugees, in Gothenburg. Information on such a development can indicate how much home buyers dislike the idea of having refugees in their neighborhood. We use a difference-in-difference approach that takes into account the walking distance to the building sites and the time since the announcement. We find support for a negative and significant price effect of around 4 percent for apartments that were within a 5-minutes walking distance from the building sites, while there is no impact for houses situated at a longer distance. We find that the impact essentially comes from a drop in apartment prices at the moment that the building permits were accepted. We find that the price effect increases with the neighborhood's education level.