Urban violence has become a major concern for politicians, corporate managers and ordinary people, following social and environmental degeneration in the largest cities in Brazil. In 1998, Inter-American Development Bank estimated that the total costs of urban violence for the Brazilian society were about 10,5% of the Gross Domestic Product. The objective of this paper was to estimate, with the support of a hedonic prices model, the impact of criminal urban violence on the market price of residential real estate in the district of Tijuca, city of Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. Two hedonic prices models have been used to evaluate both the impact of criminal violence in different districts of the city and the loss of value of houses and apartments due to the nearness of the slums in Tijuca. Main results were in accordance with common sense and previous studies. Readers must be advised that the results are very preliminary, because of the well-known problems with both the data on the Brazilian housing market and the hedonic prices model itself.
CADMA; Environment; Valuation; Real estate market; urban violence
