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We present evidence on the effect of a public health crisis on housing markets through the lens of the recent opioid crisis in the U.S. Using data on opioid prescriptions and repeat sales in Ohio, we find that house price changes around opioid dispensaries are negatively associated with the quantity of opioids dispensed. To explore a causal inference, we use a potentially cleaner measure of supply that is based on vertical integration. We estimate that a one standard deviation increase in the standardized number of pills dispensed by vertically integrated pharmacies is associated with a 5.8% decrease in house price appreciation. Our work informs the broader policy discussion on economic costs resulting from health crises.

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and UTS Business School for their valuable comments and suggestions. We thank the UCLA Ziman Center for Real Estate's Rosalinde and Arthur Gilbert Program in Real Estate, Finance and Urban Economics and the Penn State Institute for Real Estate Studies for generously funding our research. The data are provided by Zillow through the Zillow Transaction and Assessment Dataset (ZTRAX). More information on accessing the data can be found at http://www.zillow.com/ztrax. The results and opinions are our own and do not reflect the position of Zillow Group.