Kathleen Kürschner Rauck

We study the impact of a tightening of a private driving restriction in Germany’s capital, the city of Berlin, on house prices in its affluent suburbs. Using geo-referenced data on train stations, motorway access points and offers of single-family houses for sale from Germany’s leading online property broker ImmobilienScout24 in a spatially staggered DiD framework, we find evidence for sizeable price growth premia for houses located in walking distance of train stations that lie within 30 min commuting duration to Berlin main station. Property located in immediate vicinity (5 min walking distance) of train stations within 30–40 min commuting duration, however, face penalties. Our findings are of relevance for the design of public infrastructure planning policies that seek to accommodate and facilitate changes in local demands for alternative and more environmentally sustainable modes of transport induced by private driving restrictions.

This paper exploits the sudden mass arrival of refugees to Germany in 2015 to study potential price penalties suffered by residential property in vicinity of refugee reception centers (RRCs). Using novel data on exact locations of publicly-run RRCs in 2014 and 2015 and monthly offers of single-family homes for sale from Germany’s leading online property broker ImmobilienScout24, we find strong evidence in spatial DiD regressions for a sizeable negative effect on house price growth in proximity to such sites. Detached and semi-detached houses located within a 15-minute walking distance of RRCs exhibit, on average, 13 percentage points lower price growth than comparable dwellings beyond this threshold. We corroborate our finding in a battery of robustness tests and additional explorations, including sample restrictions that consider exclusively property on offer for sale within 40 minutes walking distance to RRCs and exogenous variation in the exposure to such sites. ‘Not in my backyard’ (NIMBY) stances among the resident population may explain our finding.