The data set for this study includes 1377 residential property
sales occurring within the St. Mary's River watershed over a
period of 4 years between June 1, 1999 and May 31, 2003.3 The variable definitions and summary data are included in Table 1.
The property sale prices and characteristics were obtained
from SpecPrint Inc., a real estate information collection
company that compiles information for the Maryland State
Department of Assessments and Taxation. Only arms-length
sales of single-family residential properties were included in
the data set. Thus we excluded sales that were noticeably
below market value; typically listed as being sold for $1 such as
sales between family members. Monthly price indices were
calculated from June 1999 to May 2003 using county housing
price data from Metropolitan Regional Information Systems,
Inc (Real Estate Trend Indicator, 2004). Using the monthly
price indices the property sale prices were converted to
January 2003 constant or real dollars.