Sprawl is considered to be one of the main issues in contemporary urban planning and economics. Several economic instruments have been proposed to deal with it, from environmental taxation to standards and command and control mechanisms. In this paper, I aim to investigate the impact of urban growth boundaries and in general of urban containment policies on housing prices in US cities. In particular, by using CMHPI-Freddie Mac data on the period 1975-2009 and by using parametric and semi-parametric difference-in-differences models, I find that, contrary to previous literature, the introduction of urban and state-wide growth management programs raises housing prices.