For many people, their home is their biggest investment. So it's understandable that landowners near proposed wind projects have concerns about their home values.
Fortunately, many studies have shown that wind power increases the value of homes with turbines on the property. And importantly, it does not affect nearby neighbors' property values long-term. Wind projects benefit all local property owners by driving economic investment and tax revenue. These funds improve roads, schools and community services, while also keeping local taxes low-- that all factor into property values.
What studies have been done on property values and wind farms?
Researchers at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory released a major study on wind farms and property values in 2013. They did not uncover any impacts to nearby home property values. The study analyzed more than 50,000 home sales near 67 wind projects across nine U.S. states.
This study used sophisticated techniques to control for other potential impacts on home prices. For example, it collected data that spanned a time period from well before the announcement of wind farm development to after projects were constructed and operating. This allowed researchers to control for any pre-existing differences in home sales prices across their sample and any changes that occurred due to the housing bubble.
This study is the most comprehensive to-date. It builds on both a previous Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory study as well as other academic and published U.S. studies, which also generally find no measurable impacts near operating turbines.
According to Ben Hoen, the lead author of the new report, "This is the second of two major studies we have conducted on this topic, and in both studies, we find no statistical evidence that operating wind farms have had any measurable impacts on home sale prices."
What additional studies say about wind power & property values
“Neither the view of wind energy facilities nor the distance of the home to those facilities was found to have any consistent, measurable, and significant effect on the selling prices of nearby homes,” a 2009 Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory study found.
“Property tax payments of 1 percent of the assessed value of a wind project equal approximately $10,000 per megawatt for rural communities each year,” the National Renewable Energy Laboratory reported.