Neighborhood Institutions and Residential Home Sales: Evaluating the Impact of Property Tax Exemptions

We focus on the urban amenities of “neighborhood institutions,” which are the myriad localized governments and nonprofits, such as religious and educational institutions, that provide public or quasi-public services to their neighborhoods. We examine whether neighborhood institutions positively impact their surrounding neighborhoods by utilizing property tax exemption records from the City of Milwaukee, Wisconsin, during 2002–2016. We combine these records with parcel-level data on residential home sales to identify each institution’s exact location and type. Using a traditional hedonic model and a repeat sales model, we examine the influence of nearby tax-exempt properties on residential home sales. We find from the repeat sales model that close proximity (0 m–250 m) to educational properties, labor halls, and utilities are associated with lower home sale prices, all else equal. We find a sporadic and limited positive correlation with nearby colleges and cemeteries and home sale prices.