Walkability is great. But is it valuable?
August 20th, 2009By Sara Wolfson
We’ve said before that houses close to retail and jobs are good for public health, traffic congestion, and air quality. Aside from those worthwhile external benefits for everyone, people simply like living in walkable neighborhoods, within walking distance of the places they need to go.
The massive popularity of Walk Score — the site that measures and quantifies a home or business’ walkability — has shown that walkability is a useful selling point in real estate. But until now, we never knew how quite how much people value walkability. Is there a premium value attached to a house in a walkable location? And if so, how much?
A study released this week by Joe Cortright and CEOs for Cities called “Walking the Walk” qualified the dollars-and-cents value that homes in walkable areas — all other things being equal — command over homes with “average walkability.” In 13 of the 15 housing markets they studied, increased neighborhood walkability was positively correlated with highly significant price increases.
Another working paper released earlier this month by Gary Pivo and Jeffrey Fisher out of the University of Arizona confirms this. In addition to apartments, Pivo and Fisher studied retail, office, and industrial properties and concluded that “on a 100 point scale, a 10 point increase in walkability increases property values by 5 to 8 percent, depending on property type.” That’s for all types of properties, even industrial ones.
The authors in both studies used Walk Score to calculate walkability for each of the thousands of properties.
We’ve talked about Walk Score a lot over the years, but here’s a quick run through for those of you just joining us: Walk Score’s algorithm uses Google Maps to calculate the distance between any property and 13 different categories of destinations — grocery stores, coffee shops, movie theaters, parks, bookstores, drug stores, clothing and music stores, restaurants, bars, schools, libraries, fitness centers, and hardware stores. All these destinations are weighted the same. The closer something is, the more points it gets.
Under .5 miles is the most points; over 1 mile gets you no points. It’s very simple. The folks at Walk Score know that measuring walkability this way isn’t perfect, but it’s generally a great tool to approximate how walkable a particular location is, particularly when you’re in the market for a place to live. And more walkable means closer and more convenient by cars and bikes, too. (Full disclosure: SGA communications director David Goldberg is on the Walk Score advisory board)
“These findings are significant for policy makers,” said Carol Coletta, President and CEO of CEOs for Cities. “They tell us that if urban leaders are intentional about developing and redeveloping their cities to make them more walkable, it will not only enhance the local tax base but will also contribute to individual wealth by increasing the value of what is, for most people, their biggest asset.”
According to “Walking the Walk,” a single point increase in Walk Score was correlated with a $500-$3,000 increase in the value of the home. This held true no matter whether the housing market was Chicago, Charlotte, or Austin. In fact, the study saids:
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| Albuquerque8 Originally uploaded by Transportation for America |
“Interestingly, walkability was positively correlated with prices both in metropolitan areas with relatively high levels of walkability and those with relatively low levels of walkability. For example, Walk Scores had a positive impact on values in Jacksonville and Dallas (median Walk Scores of 35 and 46 respectively) and also in Seattle and Austin (median Walk Scores 68 and 62). Walkability has a larger impact on housing values in more populous, denser metropolitan areas and those with larger transit systems.”
If you’re concerned over the “correlation” being related more to walkable neighborhoods being closer to the center-city or in nicer neighborhood, fear no longer:
“Our statistical approach controlled for key characteristics of individual housing units (their size, number of bedrooms and bathrooms, age and other factors), as well as for the neighborhoods in which they were located (including the neighborhood’s income level, proximity to the urban center and relative accessibility to employment opportunities.)”
The study notes that it may seem counter-intuitive to use “value” to talk about livability. After all, low costs are a important part of livability, particularly for people who can’t afford to drive. According to PolicyLink’s Transportation Prescription, 33 percent of poor African Americans, 25 percent of poor Latinos, and 12.1 percent of poor whites do not have access to a car. I believe the point of the study was to demonstrate the pent-up demand and market value for walkability, but what it also shows is that the poor could get priced out of areas where you don’t need a car to get around. Policy can accommodate for this — as long as we know it’s happening.
It’s great, if perhaps unsurprising, that living in close proximity to stores, parks, schools and other amenities is desirable. It isn’t shocking that people like convenience. We can’t forget that even though higher market price is presented as a positive within the study, ensuring equity in who can benefit from walkable neighborhoods is another social good.
The easiest way to make walkability more affordable is to break down the regulatory and policy barriers that make it hard to create more of it and satisfy the latent demand. As Clark Williams-Derry notes at Sightline, “…that argues for policies that are designed to increase the supply of homes in walkable neighborhoods. That’s good for affordability, good for reducing transportation costs, and a great way to help more people add walking to their daily routines.”
Walkability is great; walkability that everyone can afford is much better.
