Location, location, location: manufacturing and house price growth

Exploiting data on tens of millions of housing transactions, we show that (1) house prices grew by less in manufacturing-heavy US regions and (2) that this pattern is especially present for the lowest-value homes. Counterfactual accounting exercises reveal that regional differences in the growth of these lowest-value homes more than fully account for an observed increase in overall house price inequality. We conclude that the relative economic decline of manufacturing- heavy areas extends far beyond income and employment flows to include shifts in important local asset prices, a pattern which matters for total house price inequality