Blockbusting and the Challenges Faced by Black Families in Building Wealth through Housing in the Postwar United States
(Revised July 17, 2026)
We study the historical impacts of blockbusting, i.e., large-scale racial turnover of urban neighborhoods in the 1950s-1970s orchestrated by realty professionals using aggressive and discriminatory practices. First, using property-level data in one neighborhood of Baltimore, Maryland, we find that new residents were charged high prices by blockbusters and had elevated foreclosure rates. Second, we analyze census tract data to estimate the effects of blockbusting on neighborhoods in large U.S. cities, comparing neighborhoods subjected to blockbusting to other similar neighborhoods. We find that blockbusting caused housing values to fall substantially by 1980.
