Influence of a traditional flea market on property prices in its surroundings – a case study in Porto Alegre, Brazil

Abstract

Flea markets are important as economic and cultural phenomenon in several cities around the world. There is little attention to their influence on real estate prices. The “Brique da Redenção” occur every weekend since 1978 in Porto Alegre, Brazil. There could be positive effects on surrounding properties. However, the positioning of this flea market implies on reduce the accessibility on weekends to properties placed in the same street and it could reduce property prices. The aim of this paper is to evaluate the influence of this flea market in residential prices. It was developed hedonic models to explore these effects, with a sample of more than 5.3 thousand apartment sales. The analysis shows a satisfactory statistical performance of the hedonic model. The study indicates that Brique’ effect is capitalized in the market prices, with an average loss on value around to 7.8% to properties placed in front to the Brique.