Sat. November 12, 2011
When it comes to selling a house, whether the gay and lesbian neighbors are happy can make a big financial difference.
David Christafore of Konkuk University in Seoul and Susane Leguizamon of Tulane University in New Orleans studied property values in Columbus, Ohio, in 2000.
They found that the presence of gay and lesbian couples in neighborhoods which supported gay marriage was tied to a 1.1 percent increase in home prices. In other neighborhoods with gays and lesbians but without majority support for gay marriage, there was a 1 percent decrease in home prices.
"The perception that there is prejudice against gay and lesbians by conservative groups is strong enough to be picked up in market prices," Leguizamon told Bloomberg BusinessWeek.
The study, to be published in the
Journal of Urban Economics, compared neighborhood votes on Ohio's 2004 anti-gay Defense of Marriage Act (which passed).
The professors controlled for other factors including commute times, income, and school quality. Property values from the year 2000 were used to avoid the impact of the 2006 housing bubble.
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