Does burglary affect property prices in a nonmetropolitan municipality?

Although the international literature shows strong evidence of the effect of crime in large urban areas, particularly on housing prices, little is known about the link between crime and property prices in nonmetropolitan areas. This article describes the effect of residential burglary on the housing market in a nonmetropolitan municipality in Sweden, using data on property sales in 2005 and 2011. The study employs different strategies of hedonic price modelling to estimate the impact of residential burglary while controlling for property and neighbourhood characteristics; in particular, it explores the use of quantile regression and spatial analysis. The findings show that residential burglary has a significant negative effect on property prices in 2011 but no impact in 2005, which might be a result of the dramatic global economic downturn between these years. The article concludes with a discussion on the practical implications of the findings and offers suggestions for future research.