Mind the Anticipation Gap: A Difference-in-Differences Analysis of the Elizabeth Line’s Impact on London Housing Prices

This paper estimates the causal impact of London’s Elizabeth Line on residential property prices using a Difference-in-Differences framework applied to 1,602,487 transactions from the UK Land Registry over 2000–2024. Treated properties within five distance bands of stations are compared to a baseline beyond 10 km, separately for the construction window (2007–2015) and the post-opening window (2022–2024). During construction, prices within 1 km of stations rose by 4.9% relative to control, with substantially larger gains of 7.7–8.1% in the 2–10 km bands, indicating broad anticipatory capitalisation and spillover effects. Following the May 2022 opening, station-adjacent prices fell by 2.0%, consistent with overshooting during the construction phase, while outer-band prices remained unchanged. Effects are concentrated in zones previously under-served by Transport for London. The findings have implications for transport appraisal, value-capture timing, and equity-oriented infrastructure planning.