Wind turbines have negligible impact on house prices, new study finds

Whether wind farms affect house prices is a live issue for anti wind farm campaigners in Australia, but new research out of the US shows it’s nothing to worry about.

Researchers from Europe and the US studied the impact of neighbouring wind turbines on some 300 million home sales between 1997 and 2020. 

They found “robust evidence” for a 1 per cent drop in home values for properties that could see wind turbines, and the loss gets slightly larger for houses closer to more turbines, according to their paper published in the journal PNAS. 

But this house price discount falls to nothing by the end of the two decade period of the study’s data. 

The gap couldn’t be explained by differences in property characteristics or disparities in neighbourhood factors and housing market changes, so the best explanation the researchers gave is that wind turbines are more likely to be sited in areas where their visual disamenity affects communities with lower housing values.

Unlike many studies, this one factored in both proximity and whether a turbine could be seen from a home. 

“Expanding wind capacity often faces local opposition, partly due to a perceived visual disamenity from large wind turbines,” the three authors wrote. 

“Wind turbines, in particular, have also been a source of controversy as they may create low-frequency noise, cast shadows, create flickering, and visually degrade the landscape. 

“Understanding the visual disamenity value of wind turbines is becoming increasingly policy relevant as already large wind turbines are growing in height and are often located on high-elevation areas with extensive visibility.

“Homeowners and developers may be negatively affected by the proximity of wind turbines through depressed home values (13–15). These “NIMBY” (Not In My BackYard) concerns, which in many places have manifested in vocal local public opposition to new projects, can have an impact on the siting decision of wind power infrastructure.”

Australia data: wind turbines are land value positive

House price concerns are being used in Newcastle, where the Illawarra Coalition Against Offshore Wind (CAOW) is citing an unnamed Canadian realtor’s claims that homes in sight of wind turbines sold for 20 per cent to 40 per cent less than other comparable properties. 

It also cites an unnamed associate of the Australian Property Institute claiming a 10-22 per cent drop, but with no supporting evidence. 

Actual data on the issue suggests these claims are wildly off-base. 

The latest PNAS study follows research from the United States’ Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory in December.

It found the negative impact of wind farms on nearby property values is restricted to “homes located within one mile of a commercial wind turbine”, and even then, the impact is limited to three to five years. 

In Australia, in the early years land buyers truly did not care about the impact of wind turbines on neighbouring property. 

In 2006, Henderson and Horning Property Consultants reported that a study it did of wind farms and 78 property sales over 15 years showed the Crookwell wind farm in NSW had no measurable reduction in values of rural properties in sight range. 

Indeed, some farmers are clamouring to host renewables projects because of the weather-resistant income they provide over time. 

In 2009, the NSW Valuer General found that wind farms had no impact on nearby 40 property sales, and might have had an impact on another five but it couldn’t conclusively pinpoint turbines as the culprit.