Measuring Heterogeneous Price Effects for Home Acquisition Programs in At-Risk Regions

Any entity offering flood insurance, whether it is private or government-administered such as the National Flood Insurance Program (NFIP), faces the challenge of solvency. This is especially true for the NFIP, where homeowner affordability criteria limit the opportunity to charge fully risk-based premiums. One solution is to remove the highest flood risk properties from the insurer's book of business. Acquisition (buyout) of flood-prone structures is a potentially permanent solution that eliminates the highest risk properties while providing homeowners with financial assistance to relocate in a less risky location. To encourage participation, homeowners are offered a preflood fair market value of their damaged (or at risk of damage) structures. Although many factors have been shown to affect a homeowner's decision to accept an acquisition offer, very little research has been devoted to the influence of price or monetary incentive offered on homeowners' willingness to participate in acquisition programs. We estimate a pooled probit model and employ a bootstrap methodology to determine the effects of hypothetical home price offers on homeowners' acquisition decisions. We do so while controlling for environmental factors, property characteristics, and homeowner sociodemographic characteristics. Results show that price indeed has a positive effect on likelihood of accepting an acquisition contract. Furthermore, estimated homeowner supply curves differ significantly based on the damage status of the acquisition offer, as well as homeowner and property characteristics.