Walkable Neighborhoods Are Worth More
You may have already heard of Walk Score -- an endlessly entertaining internet tool that lets people discover how pedestrian-friendly their neighborhood is. Walk Score ranks neighborhood "walkability" based on the mix of stores and services that are within walking distance of any home in North America. If you haven't already, you should check it out -- but only if you've got nothing pressing to do, since it's pretty addictive.
Now, the good folks at CEOs for Cities have taken it on themselves to ask -- does Walk Score mean anything for real estate values? Are people really willing to pay more to live in a place where they can do daily errands on foot, rather than in a car?
According to their new report, "Walking the Walk," (pdf link) the answer is an emphatic yes: people value walkable neighborhoods so much that, holding everything else constant, each additional Walk Score point adds somewhere between $500 and $3,000 to the value of a home. In Seattle -- the only Northwest city for which there's data -- a point of walkability adds about $1,400 to home values.
