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Walk More, Worth More
August 19, 2009
Posted by: Sheila
With home prices bottoming out in many areas nationally, people are looking for any way to get more for their homes. For some, there is a ray of hope….walkability. A new study says that if you want more dough for your house (tell us if anyone says no) it helps to be in a walkable neighborhood.
That's the conclusion of the analysis from CEOs for Cities that reveals that homes in more walkable neighborhoods are worth more than similar homes in less-walkable neighborhoods.
The report, “Walking the Walk: How Walkability Raises Housing Values in U.S. Cities” by Joseph Cortright, analyzed data from 94,000 real estate transactions in 15 major markets provided by ZipRealty and found that in 13 of the 15 markets, higher levels of walkability, as measured by Walk Score, were directly linked to higher home values.
Key findings include:
- In 13 out of 15 metro areas studied, higher levels of walkability were directly linked to higher home values.
- In the typical metropolitan area, a one point increase in Walk Score was associated with an increase in value ranging from $700 to $3,000. Gains were larger in denser, urban areas and smaller in less dense markets.
- In the typical areas studied, the premium commanded for neighborhoods with above-average Walk Scores ranged from about $4,000 to $34,000.
Click here to read the full release or to download the complete study.
Duncan Connor, August 28, 2009
I love the idea of walkable cities, I'm from England and would love to be able to use my feet rather than my car more, but in Atlanta (curiously not included in this study) it's just not often possible. However - I have issues with walkscores in general. They fail to take into account sidewalks and crosswalks, which facilitate being able to walk to places, and ignore automobile/pedestrian traffic accidents, which make walking more or less risky. As a Realtor, I'm dismayed by the fact that walkscore.com says my nearest school is a Ballet School, my nearest grocery store is a gas station, and my nearest fitness center is aimes at teenagers. I rarely get buyers asking where the nearest balet school is, more often they will ask about the public school system. And anyplace that has a gas station serving as its grocery store is not a place I want to live. Walkscore also weights all amenities equally, so proximity to a bar or movie theater is weighted the same as proximity to a school or grocery store. For most parents, I imagine it's more important to live close to the school our kids attend than it is to live clsoe to a bar. Maybe for urban singles and young couples it might be the other way around. If walkscore could allow the individual user to determine the importance of each amenity that would produce more reflective scores. Because what's walkable for one person may not be for another, and making broad inferences from such subjective information is misleading and does the real estate market no favors at all.
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