IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/ire/issued/v18n032015p317-329.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Triskaidekaphobia and North American Residential Real Estate Prices

Author

Listed:
  • James E. Larsen

    (Wright State University)

Abstract

A previous study led its authors to conclude that superstition impacts price formation for single-family dwellings in the Vancouver area. Houses there with an address that ends in the "unlucky¨ number 13 are found to sell at a discount compared to otherwise similar houses. The primary objective of this study is to determine whether the previous results apply in another North American housing market. Hedonic regression is applied to single-family house transactions that occurred in Montgomery County, Ohio, to determine if houses with an address of 13 sold for different prices than houses that comprise the remainder of the sample. The same test is then conducted for houses with an address other than 13. No mispricing associated with the number 13 is discovered, but seven other addresses are found to be significantly related to price. As all but one of the significant house numbers identified in this study are not reputed to be particularly lucky or unlucky, we conclude that the price effects discovered are attributable to coincidence. The results of this first study to investigate the possibility of mispricing due to superstition about the number 13 in a residential property market in the United States are consistent with rational market behavior.

Suggested Citation

  • James E. Larsen, 2015. "Triskaidekaphobia and North American Residential Real Estate Prices," International Real Estate Review, Global Social Science Institute, vol. 18(3), pages 317-329.
    • Handle: RePEc:ire:issued:v:18:n:03:2015:p:317-329
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://www.gssinst.org/irer/wp-content/uploads/2020/10/v18n3-triskaidekaphobia-and-north-american-residential-real-estate-prices.pdf
    File Function: Full text
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Steven C. Bourassa & Vincent S. Peng, 1999. "Hedonic Prices and House Numbers: The Influence of Feng Shui," International Real Estate Review, Global Social Science Institute, vol. 2(1), pages 79-93.
    2. Nicole M. Fortin & Andrew J. Hill & Jeff Huang, 2014. "Superstition In The Housing Market," Economic Inquiry, Western Economic Association International, vol. 52(3), pages 974-993, July.
    3. Kolb, Robert W & Rodriguez, Ricardo J, 1987. "Friday the Thirteenth: 'Part VII'--A Note," Journal of Finance, American Finance Association, vol. 42(5), pages 1385-1387, December.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Blog mentions

    As found by EconAcademics.org, the blog aggregator for Economics research:
    1. Triskaidekaphobia When People Buy a House (podcast 102)
      by Marc Abrahams in Improbable Research on 2017-02-15 21:40:36

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Wen-Chieh Wu & Yu-Chun Ma & Steven C. Bourassa, 2018. "Folk Customs and Home Improvement Decisions," International Real Estate Review, Global Social Science Institute, vol. 21(3), pages 317-341.
    2. Dmitry Burakov, 2018. "Do discounts mitigate numerological superstitions? Evidence from the Russian real estate market," Judgment and Decision Making, Society for Judgment and Decision Making, vol. 13(5), pages 467-470, September.
    3. De Paola, Maria & Gioia, Francesca & Scoppa, Vincenzo, 2014. "Overconfidence, omens and gender heterogeneity: Results from a field experiment," Journal of Economic Psychology, Elsevier, vol. 45(C), pages 237-252.
    4. Woei-Chyuan Wong & Nur Adiana Hiau Abdullah & Hock-Eam Lim, 2019. "The Value Of Chinese Superstitions In Malaysia: Evidence From Car Plate Auctioning," The Singapore Economic Review (SER), World Scientific Publishing Co. Pte. Ltd., vol. 64(01), pages 115-137, March.
    5. repec:cup:judgdm:v:16:y:2021:i:4:p:1039-1059 is not listed on IDEAS
    6. repec:cup:judgdm:v:13:y:2018:i:5:p:467-470 is not listed on IDEAS
    7. Elena B. Pokryshevskaya & Evgeny A. Antipov, 2015. "A study of numerological superstitions in the apartments market," Economics Bulletin, AccessEcon, vol. 35(1), pages 83-88.
    8. repec:cup:judgdm:v:10:y:2015:i:6:p:590-592 is not listed on IDEAS
    9. Brian A. Polin & Eyal Ben Isaac & Itzhak Aharon, 2021. "Patterns in manually selected numbers in the Israeli lottery," Judgment and Decision Making, Society for Judgment and Decision Making, vol. 16(4), pages 1039-1059, July.
    10. Maria De Paola & Francesca Gioia & Vincenzo Scoppa, 2013. "Overconfidence, Omens And Emotions: Results From A Field Experiment," Working Papers 201303, Università della Calabria, Dipartimento di Economia, Statistica e Finanza "Giovanni Anania" - DESF.
    11. Teklay, Belaynesh & Yu, Wei & Zhu, Keying, 2024. "The effect of superstitious beliefs on corporate investment efficiency: evidence from China," International Review of Economics & Finance, Elsevier, vol. 92(C), pages 1434-1447.
    12. Evgeny A. Antipov & Elena B. Pokryshevskaya, 2015. "Are buyers of apartments superstitious? Evidence from the Russian real estate market," Judgment and Decision Making, Society for Judgment and Decision Making, vol. 10(6), pages 590-592, November.
    13. Woo, Chi-Keung & Horowitz, Ira & Luk, Stephen & Lai, Aaron, 2008. "Willingness to pay and nuanced cultural cues: Evidence from Hong Kong's license-plate auction market," Journal of Economic Psychology, Elsevier, vol. 29(1), pages 35-53, February.
    14. Brad R. Humphreys & Adam Nowak & Yang Zhou, 2016. "Cultural Superstitions and Residential Real Estate Prices: Transaction-level Evidence from the US Housing Market," Working Papers 16-27, Department of Economics, West Virginia University.
    15. Utpal Bhattacharya & Wei-Yu Kuo & Tse-Chun Lin & Jing Zhao, 2018. "Do Superstitious Traders Lose Money?," Management Science, INFORMS, vol. 64(8), pages 3772-3791, August.
    16. Jan Fidrmuc & J. D. Tena, 2015. "Friday the 13th: The Empirics of Bad Luck," Kyklos, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 68(3), pages 317-334, August.
    17. Bai, Min & Xu, Limin & Yu, Chia-Feng (Jeffrey) & Zurbruegg, Ralf, 2020. "Superstition and stock price crash risk," Pacific-Basin Finance Journal, Elsevier, vol. 60(C).
    18. repec:cup:judgdm:v:11:y:2016:i:3:p:243-259 is not listed on IDEAS
    19. Tong V. Wang & Rogier J. D. Potter van Loon & Martijn J. van den Assem & Dennie van Dolder, 2016. "Number preferences in lotteries," Judgment and Decision Making, Society for Judgment and Decision Making, vol. 11(3), pages 243-259, May.
    20. Invernizzi, Giovanna M. & Miller, Joshua B. & Coen, Tommaso & Dufwenberg, Martin & Oliveira, Luiz Edgard R., 2021. "Tra i Leoni: Revealing the preferences behind a superstition," Journal of Economic Psychology, Elsevier, vol. 82(C).
    21. David Hirshleifer & Ming Jian & Huai Zhang, 2018. "Superstition and Financial Decision Making," Management Science, INFORMS, vol. 64(1), pages 235-252, January.
    22. Han, SeungOh, 2024. "Price clustering on cryptocurrency order books at a US-based exchange," Journal of Behavioral and Experimental Finance, Elsevier, vol. 41(C).
    23. Pham, Dai Van, 2024. "The effects of superstition on firms' investment behavior: Evidence from Vietnam, an irreligious country✰," Journal of Comparative Economics, Elsevier, vol. 52(1), pages 1-27.
    24. Terence tai-leung Chong & Angela Fung & Wing-ting Lee & Ka-lai Man, 2009. "Hedonic pricing models for metropolitan bus services," Economics Bulletin, AccessEcon, vol. 29(2), pages 630-637.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    Superstition; North America; Housing Prices; International Housing Markets; Hedonic Regression; Triskaidekaphobia;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • L85 - Industrial Organization - - Industry Studies: Services - - - Real Estate Services

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:ire:issued:v:18:n:03:2015:p:317-329. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: IRER Graduate Assistant/Webmaster (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://www.gssinst.org/gssinst/index.html .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.