Waste facility impacts on property values

Abstract

Noxious facilities and impacts are intuitively expected to affect residential property values (PV). This research analyzes the results of 69 PV studies in 10 categories of noxious facilities to test for consistency of significant, negative PV impacts. Waste facilities were one of the categories. Consistent PV impacts occur with airports and roads and where there are direct effects on air quality and visibility impacts, as well as landslide and flood zones as a result of observable, specified and quantified physical impacts. Property values decrease by between 2 and 22.5%. In contrast, PV impacts are inconsistent near nuclear plants, waste facilities, urban developments, electrical power plants and transmission lines. In order to clarify the reasons for these counterintuitive results, the facility characteristics and impacts perceived by prospective buyers must be quantified and correlated with PV changes.