When Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome (SARS) broke out in Hong Kong in 2003, some media outlets predicted economic calamity for the city. But by one financial measure — real estate prices — Hong Kong hardly suffered, according to research by Grace Wong , a Wharton real estate professor. Wong has found that Hong Kong housing prices dropped only 1.6% during the three-month epidemic and the six months afterwards. Even housing complexes where SARS victims lived saw only a 3% dip in their value, on average. Hong Kong residents did slow their home purchases and sales — Wong documented a decline in housing turnover — but they didn’t bail out of the market. Rather than panicking, they seemed to have waited to see what would happen. Their prudence proved prescient. In June 2003, the World Health Organization (WHO) officially declared that the epidemic had ended in the city. The flu-like illness had subsided as abruptly as it had struck. As Wong points out in her paper titled, “Has SARS Infected the Property Market?…