The effect of proximity to a registered sex offender's residence on single-family house selling price.

Estimated Estimated Variable Coefficient P > t Coefficient P > t Intercept 31,736 < .0001 29,578 < .0001 PROX -7,188 .0126 -4,303 .0115 SQFT 45 < .0001 46 < .0001 AGE -385 < .0001 -365 < .0001 LOT 7,622 < .0001 7,404 < .0001 FIRE 9,573 <. 0001 9,542 < .0001 OWN 8,155 < .0001 7,896 < .0001 WINTER -3,438 .0132 -4,020 .0084 BATH3 34,707 < .0001 33,016 < .0001 FULL 5,622 < .0001 6,228 < .0001 LOC5 11,556 < .0001 11,066 < .0001 LOC7 -20,700 < .0001 -19,756 < .0001 LOC11 -22,650 < .0001 -23,391 < .0001 LOC14 -8,547 .0283 -7,955 .0506 LOC17 12,610 .0259 12,065 .0416 LOC18 24,834 < .0001 23,421 < .0001 LOC19 -26,103 < .0001 -26,753 < .0001 LOC20 -16,260 < .0001 -18,168 < .0001 LOC21 -16,099 < .0001 -16,772 < .0001 LOC22 -14,594 < .0001 -14,239 .0002 LOC25 -31,452 < .0001 -32,470 < .0001 LOC26 -22,024 < .0001 -20,955 < .0001 LOC28 14,084 .0029 12,716 .0089 LOC29 -29,222 < .0001 -27,283 < .0001 LOC30 -29,740 < .0001 -25,596 .0002 LOC31 -24,554 < .0001 -24,347 < .0001 LOC33 -25,978 .0004 -26,864 .0004 LOC34 -26,114 < .0001 -26,592 < .0001 LOC37 -25,539 < .0001 -26,321 < .0001 LOC39 21,148 < .0001 19,742 < .0001 LOC41 77,149 < .0001 81,136 < .0001 LOC42 14,547 .0027 13,375 .0073 LOC45 15,693 < .0001 14,138 .0005 LOC47 9,274 .0013 8,186 .0071 LOC48 30,216 < .0001 28,510 < .0001 LOC49 22,942 .0171 21,150 .0323

Adjusted [R.sup.2] Adjusted [R.sup.2]

=.7267 =.7320 Table 3 Selling Price Effect

Proximity to Offender Subject to

Limited Disclosure

Dollar Percentage PROX (in miles) n Price Effect P > t Price Effect <= 0.1 31 -11,864 .0301 17.4 > 0.1-0.2 92 -7,475 .0207 10.2 > 0.2-0.3 124 -7,188 .0126 9.3 > 0.3-0.4 135 -5,104 .0690 6.4 > 0.4-0.5 153 -703 .7970 0.8

Proximity to Offender Subject to

Passive Notification

Dollar Percentage PROX (in miles) n Price Effect P > t Price Effect <= 0.1 238 -4,208 .0492 7.5 > 0.1-0.2 463 -4,303 .0115 5.0 > 0.2-0.3 486 -3,465 .0574 3.8 > 0.3-0.4 369 -3,843 .0717 3.9 > 0.4-0.5 271 -1,932 .4765 1.8

The authors thank the Ohio Link and the Paul Lawrence Dunbar Library at Wright State University for their generous support by providing the ESRI software through a site licensing arrangement. We also thank the Ohio GIS-Net for providing GIS advice, the Department of Urban Affairs and Geography at Wright State University for their assistance in this study, and the reviewers who commented on this paper.

(1.) In general, previous studies find that if an externality is perceived as favorable, it has a positive effect on the value of the subject property; if the externality is perceived as unfavorable, it has a negative effect. Negative price effects have been demonstrated for houses in close proximity to other negative externalities including a variety of environmental hazards. For a review of the environmental hazard literature, see Melissa A. Boyle and Katherine A. Kiel, "A Survey of House Price Hedonic Studies of the Impact of Environmental Externalities," Journal of Real Estate Literature 9, no. 2 (2001): 117-144.

(2.) John Q. La Fond, "The Costs of Enacting a Sexual Predator Law, Psychology, Public Policy and Law 4 (1998): 468-504.

(3.) P.L. 104-145, [section]1, 110 Stat. 1345. One of the stimuli for this law was the case of Megan Kanka, who in 1994 was raped and killed by a repeat sex offender who, unknown to Megan's parents, lived across the street from her home.

(4.) Ohio Revised Code [section] 2950.01; offenses included in this statute are rape, sexual battery, gross sexual imposition, kidnapping, abduction, unlawful restraint, criminal child enticement, corruption of a minor, compelling prostitution, endangering children (under age 18), pandering obscenity, pandering sexually oriented material involving a minor, and illegal use of a minor in nudity-oriented material. Sexual predators must report to the sheriff's office every 90 days for life.

(5.) Habitual sex offenders must report to the sheriff's office once annually for 20 years.

(6.) Sexually oriented offenders must report to the sheriff's office once annually for 10 years.

(7.) Unlike in some other states (e.g., Alaska), house sellers in Ohio are not required to report the presence of sex offenders on the mandatory seller disclosure form.

(8.) See for example, Dennis M. Doren, "Recidivism Base Rates, Predictions of Sex Offender Recidivism, and the 'Sexual Predator' Commitment Laws," Behavioral Sciences & the Law 16 (1998): 97-114; D. M. Greenberg, "Sexual Recidivism in Sex Offenders," Canadian Journal of Psychiatry 43 (1998): 459-465; Michael P. Hagan and Karyn L. Gust-Brey, "A Ten-Year Longitudinal Study of Adolescent Rapists Upon Return to the Community," International Journal of Offender Therapy and Comparative Criminology 43, no. 4 (1999): 448-458; R. K. Hanson, R. A. Steffy, and R. Gauthier, "Long-Term Recidivism of Child Molesters," Journal of Consulting and Clinical Psychology 61 (1993): 646-652; R. A. Prentky, et al., "Recidivism Rates Among Child Molesters and Rapists: A Methodological Analysis," Law and Human Behavior 21 (1997): 635-659; V. L. Quinsey, M. E. Rice, and G. T. Harris, "Actuarial Prediction of Sexual Recidivism," Journal of Interpersonal Violence 10 (1995): 85-105; and M. C. Seto and H. E. Barbaree, "Psychopathy, Treatment Behavior, and Sex Offender Recidivism," Journal of Interpersonal Violence 14 (1999): 1235-1248.

(9.) U.S. Department of Justice, Office of Justice Programs, Bureau of Justice Statistics.

(10.) These figures were obtained by personal communication between the authors and employees of the Bureau of Justice Statistics, United States Department of Justice.

(11.) The local real estate board reports days on the market only for the most recent listing contract; time for expired listings is not included in the figure they report.

(12.) Not all of the offenders lived in Montgomery County for the entire year. Twenty-five of the 26 offenders where limited disclosure applied lived in the county at year-end. Ten of this group did not live in the county at the beginning of the year. All 223 offenders where passive notification applied lived in the county at the end of the year, but 61 of this group did not reside in the county (or had not yet become registered sex offenders) at the beginning of the year.

(13.) The Dayton Area Board of REALTORS[R] reported 5,614 single-family home sales during the study period. Ambiguous geocoding resulted in 115 observations being discarded from the sample. The remainder were eliminated because of incomplete data.

(14.) Tele Atlas can be found at www.geocode.com. Tele Atlas provides the "Block Face Match" (BFM), which represents the best match rather than parcel level accuracy. In essence, rather than specifying the latitude and longitude at a particular point on each property (e.g., front center) the geocode derived from a BFM is actually a geometric estimation. Tele Atlas stores the beginning and ending address range for a block, and knows the number parity (odd or even). For example, the geocode assigned to 150 Eagle Street, would be roughly halfway between the presumed beginning and ending address range of 100 and 198. The interactive web site for Tele Atlas was used in this study for the geocoding because it provides a high level of location confidence. It can accurately position every point in the data set to six decimal points of a degree, and in the Montgomery County, Ohio area, this accuracy translates to less than 20 inches. It is also fast, repeatable, commonly used in geographic information systems (GIS) work, and accessible to anyone conducting a study. There is a charge for the service, but the cost per address is low.