The Power of Big Companies? A Hedonic Pricing Approach of Estimating the Impact of Amazon Inc. to the Local Housing Market

The activities of Amazon Inc. are often considered as important signals to investors. Once Amazon announces the plan for a new campus, investors start to purchase properties in the neighborhood, trusting that Amazon would raise the housing prices. In this paper, I use over 70,000 housing transactions in Seattle between 2011 to 2017 to investigate the impact of Amazon’s new campus on the housing prices. Based on a difference-in-differences hedonic model, my results reveal that Amazon’s new campus actually decreases property value by 3%- 5% for homes located within 2 miles of the headquarter and by 4% for the ones located between 2 to 4 miles from the headquarter