The Price of Residential Land for Counties, ZIP Codes, and Census Tracts in the United States

Summary

This FHFA staff working paper (19-01, 2019; published in the Journal of Monetary Economics, 2021) by Morris Davis, William Larson, Stephen Oliner & Jessica Shui constructs land prices and land shares for counties, ZIP codes, and census tracts across the United States, from millions of property appraisals over 2012–2019.[1] It is the granular successor to the aggregate land-price literature its authors built — Davis & Heathcote (2007) and Davis & Palumbo (2008), the series the Lincoln Institute maintains as "Land and Property Values in the U.S."[2] — and the modern data backbone under Larson's earlier national estimate.

Why It Matters Twice Over

• As data: it is the wiki's best citable source for where US land value sits — tract-level land shares covering most of the housing stock — feeding the scale-of-rent debate and the geography of the capital-share finding.
• As a proof of method: producing defensible land values separately from structures, at national scale, from appraisal microdata (including kernel-smoothing over vacant-land and teardown sales) is precisely what the assessment objection says cannot be done reliably. A federal housing agency doing it as routine research is the strongest institutional counter-exhibit on file — stronger than any advocacy claim, because assessment feasibility is incidental to the authors' purpose.
• It is cited in both the data and assessment installments of Doucet's ACX series; per the wiki's de-referencing rule, the wiki now carries it directly.

Nuances and Limits

• Residential only — the dataset covers residential land; commercial, agricultural, and public land require other sources.
• Appraisal-derived — estimates inherit appraisal-industry conventions; the authors' methods mitigate but cannot eliminate this.
• Verification note. Proxy-blocked fetches; the paper, venues (FHFA WP 19-01; JME 2021), scope, and method are corroborated across four independent listings. Scan depth Light. [VERIFY: headline national land share and any quoted magnitudes on direct read before citing specific numbers.]

Bears On

• Outcome (data): Land rent could fund government
• Objection (method counter-exhibit): Land cannot be assessed
• Concept: Mass-Appraisal Methods
• Research: Davis & Heathcote (2007) · Larson (2015)

See Also

• Albouy, Ehrlich & Shin — Metropolitan Land Values
• Gwartney, Estimating Land Values — the practitioner counterpart

Sources

1. Morris A. Davis, William D. Larson, Stephen D. Oliner & Jessica Shui, "The Price of Residential Land for Counties, ZIP Codes, and Census Tracts in the United States," FHFA Staff Working Paper 19-01 (2019); Journal of Monetary Economics (2021). FHFA · Publisher — used for scope, data, and method (A/B-claims; see verification note).
2. Morris A. Davis & Michael G. Palumbo, "The price of residential land in large US cities," Journal of Urban Economics 63(1), 2008 (earlier FRB FEDS 2006-25). FEDS — used for the series lineage (A-claim).