Historic amenities, income and sorting of households

We aim to estimate the impact of historic amenities on house prices and sorting of households. Historic district boundaries enable us to measure the external view effect of historic amenities, defined as the effect of a historic amenity on the price of other buildings through an improved view from the other buildings. We use a semiparametric regression-discontinuity approach to control for unobserved location characteristics and focus on houses constructed after 1970. It is shown that the (external) view effect of historic amenities is 3.5% of the house price. Rich households have a higher willingness to pay for a view on historic amenities and therefore sort themselves in historic districts, which contributes to an explanation for the substantial spatial income differences within cities.