Ownership Restriction and Housing Values: Evidence from American Housing Survey

Abstract

Amendments to the Fair Lending Act have exempted an age restriction on ownership from fair housing prohibitions. This paper studies the economic impact of such ownership restriction on housing values. Using American Housing Survey data, we find that there is a significant premium attached to the restrictive covenant when other factors are controlled. In particular, we find that imposing age restriction on ownership increases the housing values by anywhere from 10.5% to 12.7%. At the average house value, this is equivalent to a dollar amount between $14,642 and $17,399. The estimates are robust to different specifications in hedonic equations.

Keywords: Ownership restriction, Housing value