The effects of land-use regulation on local real estate market: empirical evidence from Brazil

Abstract

This paper aims to understand how restrictions to urban land-use could affect Real Estate Market prices in Brazilian urban environment. We explored a heterogeneity arisen from the enactment of a city-level Height-Restriction-Law which limited how tall buildings could get in some, but not all, neighborhoods in Recife, one of the largest cities of Brazil. We used a Differences in Geographic Discontinuity (Diff-in-Geo-Disc) design on a unique data set provided by the Municipal Government to show that the imposed restriction led to an interesting Market Behavior: apartment’s unit prices experienced a significant increase in prices meanwhile house’s unit prices depreciated value. Our findings rely on empirical models grounded by several robustness checks.