Wildfire Risk and the Residential Housing Market: A Spatial Hedonic Analysis

The goal of this paper is to analyze the effect of wildfire hazard risk on residential housing prices in Colorado Springs, Colorado. How does the risk of wildfire impact transaction values, and do buyers and sellers in the residential housing market accurately capitalize their perception of low probability events such as wildfires into the price of a house? Working within the hedonic property model framework, I conducted a spatial analysis of the Colorado Springs housing market. This paper employs regression analysis to better understand how the spatial and structural characteristics of a house, along with an objective wildfire risk rating, jointly determine market value.