Leveraging Main Street as a Real Estate Amenity: Downtown Revitalization and Residential Property Values

As part of their efforts to reverse the effects of twentieth-century downtown disinvestment and automobile-oriented development, stakeholders in small towns across the United States look for viable means of restoring the vitality and character of their historic business districts. In this paper, I evaluate a widely adopted downtown revitalization strategy—the Main Street Program—by measuring its influence on the local housing market. I find that home sale prices are higher for residential properties sold in program-participating communities, and I observe an additional sale price premium for homes located in closer proximity to downtown districts with an active Main Street Program.