What’s really going on with wind farms and property prices?
Image source: RenewEconomy (12 August 2019) [1]
One of the claims we continue to see used by anti-wind campaigners in an attempt to turn people against wind farms is the claim that wind affects property prices — but what’s really going on with wind power and property values? Yes 2 Renewables has undertaken a review of research on the topic to determine if there is in fact any relationship between wind farms and property prices, both globally and locally here in Australia.
One of the most comprehensive studies was undertaken in 2014 by government agency
RenewableUK and the Centre for Economic and Business Research. This study analysed
85,000 property transactions located within 5 kilometres of 7 wind farms, finding that 6 out of 7 sites demonstrated no material impact on house prices from announcement through to completion. On average across the wind farm lifecycle, prices rose by greater than the county average. Furthermore, the one site that posted a brief decrease during the construction phase, recovered after construction had completed and then remained above the county average [2] .
A further study in the US state of Massachusetts conducted jointly by the University of
Connecticut and Lawrence Berkley National Laboratory assessed the claim that wind
turbines affect house prices. The study compared over 120,000 property sale transactions
within 5 miles of 41 wind turbines and found that while there was weak evidence to suggest that initial announcement of wind farms had a negative effect, this was no longer apparent through the construction and operation phases. The study also found the rate of sales was not impacted by the introduction of wind turbines [3] .
The study was unique in that it compared property sales in urban settings (rather than the typical rural setting), testing price effects against other known negative house price factors such as landfill sites, electricity transmission lines and prisons, and positive price factors such as open spaces and beaches. The study concluded that the inclusion of wind turbines did not affect the impact of the other negative and positive factors in property sale prices.
In Australia, a study prepared for the NSW Valuer General, of 45 properties across 8 wind
farm locations in NSW and Victoria found that while there was variation in price across
different property types and locations, those properties with reduced prices could not be solely linked to wind farms. In the case of rural and properties in townships with views of wind farms, there was no clear evidence of any fall in sale price [4] .
The Clean Energy Council have presented a wind energy fact sheet supporting a range of studies in Australia showing the wind farms do not have an impact on rural property prices, pointing to other drivers such as access to services as far more important.
Further, a CSIRO study cited in the...
