Impact of School Shootings on Real Estate

According to a new paper by University of Illinois researchers, home prices drop significantly in school districts where a shooting has occurred, and remain low in the ensuing years.

The paper's authors Jean Sebastian Munoz, a Ph.D. student at U of I-Urbana, and assistant professor in University of Georgia's real estate program Ruchi Singh write, “House prices within the affected school districts fall by an average of 7.8 percent (or $15,051 on average), and its effects persist for, at least, five years,” MarketWatch reports. As well, homes on the border of the school district experience an average 13.6 percent, or $20,337, drop in price.

And the declines were bigger for homes with more bedrooms, suggesting that the reaction is felt particularly strongly by homebuyers with children. “The people who would potentially buy in the area aren’t all that interested in paying a lot for a house that’s in a school district that just experienced this horrific event,” Munoz said in a statement. Munoz looked in depth at 15 communities that had suffered a major mass shooting between 1998 and 2014.

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