New US Study Shows Impact of Wind Farms on Home Sale Prices

The construction of onshore wind energy projects can be linked to several possible local economic impacts, including job creation, tax revenue, local landowner income, and changes to home sale prices, to name a few.

Home sale prices near wind projects have been the subject of previous studies, which did not find widespread, statistically observable impacts in the US. This study updates the previous analyses by reviewing 500,000 home sales within five miles of US wind projects and focusing on the time before, during, and after project construction.

The new analysis, “Commercial Wind Turbines and Residential Home Values: New Evidence from the Universe of Land-Based Wind Projects in the United States,” compiles a unique dataset that includes home transactions across 34 states and 428 unique wind projects occurring between 2005 and 2020. The dataset spans the period four years before significant activity began in the project area, referred to as “announcement,” to more than six years after the project began operating. 

The study, published in Energy Policy in open-access format, is available here. 

Some key takeaways from the study are:

• Home sale prices that are affected begin after the “announcement” of the project, decrease during construction, and begin to return to pre-announcement levels after operation begins.
• For homes within one mile of a wind project compared to homes three-five miles away, there is an average reduction in home sale prices of approximately 11%. Weak or no effects appear beyond that distance.
• Effects for projects within approximately one mile away begin an average of three years before construction starts on the project, with home prices continuing to decline through project construction.
• Home prices return to inflation-adjusted pre-announcement levels three to five years after project operation commences.
• Adverse effects are not evident within a half mile nor outside of 1.25 miles of the nearest turbine. Within a half mile of the nearest turbine, there are fewer sales. If property value impacts exist within that distance, they were too small and/or too infrequent to result in any widespread, statistically observable impact within the study model.  
• Impacts are apparent in more populous counties. 

Although this work significantly advances the literature, using the most comprehensive dataset assembled to date, it has some important caveats: This study did not compare home values in wind communities to communities without wind, nor did it examine the impact of other economic effects such as increased local tax revenue and worker income that might increase home prices across communities with wind development.