Did the COVID-19 Pandemic Crisis Affect Housing Prices Evenly in the U.S.?

While it is well-known that housing prices generally increased in the United States (U.S.) during the COVID-19 pandemic crisis, to the best of our knowledge, there has been no research conducted to understand the spatial patterns and heterogeneity of housing price changes in the U.S. real estate market during the crisis. There has been less attention on the consequences of this pandemic, in terms of the spatial distribution of housing price changes in the U.S. The objective of this study was to explore the spatial patterns and heterogeneous distribution of housing price change rates across different areas of the U.S. real estate market during the COVID-19 pandemic. We calculated the global Moran’s I, Anselin’s local Moran’s I, and Getis-Ord’s Gi∗ statistics of the housing price change rates in 2856 U.S. counties. The following two major findings were obtained: (1) The influence of the COVID-19 pandemic crisis on housing price change varied across space in the U.S. The patterns not only differed from metropolitan areas to rural areas, but also varied from one metropolitan area to another. (2) It seems that COVID-19 made Americans more cautious about buying property in densely populated urban downtowns that had higher levels of virus infection; therefore, it was found that during the COVID-19 pandemic year of 2020–2021, the housing price hot spots were typically located in more affordable suburbs, smaller cities, and areas away from high-cost, high-density urban downtowns. This study may be helpful for understanding the relationship between the COVID-19 pandemic and the real estate market, as well as human behaviors in response to the pandemic.