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Abstract
The purpose of this research is to effectively determine whether a home in Camden County, GA possesses a sale price premium for being elevated above the base flood elevation in flood zone A. Hedonic pricing is initially used to determine the significance of certain housing characteristics, but finds that elevation is insignificant in explaining the sale price of a home in the study area due to low observation numbers. Nearest neighbor propensity score matching is then used to estimate the property price differential between a treatment group of elevated homes, and control group of non-elevated homes, based on specified housing characteristics related to the probability of a home being elevated. The matching procedure concludes that an elevated home costs $35,756.94 more than a non-elevated home on average, consistent with a local appraisers analysis of elevation adjustments, and present value calculations based on FEMA insurance premium data.