Damage Versus Salience in Housing Markets: The Undamaging 2024 Almaty Earthquakes, with the 2023 Türkiye Earthquake as a Damage Benchmark

Do housing markets respond to earthquake risk when no damage occurs? This preprint studies two strongly felt but non-damaging earthquakes that shook Almaty, Kazakhstan, in January (M7.0) and March (M5.3) 2024. Using official Bureau of National Statistics data on real apartment prices (2015–2024) and on the house-versus-apartment share of transactions (2015–2026), it estimates interrupted time-series models and a difference-in-differences comparison with Astana and Shymkent, supported by an event study, randomization inference and placebo tests. Apartment prices show no break at either date. The house share of transactions shows no large shift, although a small move toward houses (about 1–2 percentage points) cannot be ruled out. Google Trends data show the earthquakes caused the largest spike in earthquake-related attention in Almaty's 2022–2026 search record, yet house searches did not rise, and a brief jump in apartment searches did not lead to more purchases. A damage benchmark using the destructive 2023 Kahramanmaraş earthquake in Türkiye shows a 5–6% relative price rise on a simple comparison, falling to about 2% once a pre-quake trend is controlled for. The results suggest that a felt but costless shock was not enough to produce a large change in revealed housing demand.