How access to public transit may have saved many Americans’ homes during the Great Recession

The Great Recession which followed the 2008 financial crash saw massive increases in the number of homes being foreclosed and trillions wiped from homeowners’ equity. But the impact of the recession was not uniform across the country in all places. In new research, Timothy F. Welch, Steven R. Gehrke and Steven Farber look at the effects of access to public transport on house prices during the Great Recession. They find that houses less than a mile from stations in Atlanta, Baltimore or Portland all kept their value to a greater degree than those located farther away from stations.They suggest that this may be down to lower transport-related costs, better local economic conditions and greater access to employment opportunities.