PORTLAND, Ore. March 10, 2008. Any realtor
will tell you that trees can increase the value of a home, but
by how much? A recent study addressed this question by quantifying
the impact of street trees on Portland’s housing market.
The
study was conducted in 2007 by research forester Geoffrey Donovan
of the Forest Service’s Pacific Northwest Research
Station and David Butry of the National Institute of Standards
and Technology, U.S. Department of Commerce. “We measured
the trees in the public right of way outside of 3,479 houses in
Portland that sold between July 2006 and March 2007,” Donovan
says, “after controlling for differences in house and neighborhood
characteristics, we found that the number of street trees directly
fronting a house and canopy cover within 100 feet of the home
both positively influenced house price.”
Key findings of the study
are:
- On average, street trees add $7,020 to the price of a
house in Portland, which is equivalent to increasing the size
of a house by 106 square feet.
- Street trees increase the value
of homes in Portland by a total
of $1.1 billion, which is equivalent to annual benefits of $45
million.
- The annual maintenance costs of Portland’s street
trees are $4.6 million ($3.3 million is borne by the homeowner),
so the
benefit-cost ratio of Portland’s street trees is almost 10 to 1.
- Street
trees increase annual property tax revenue for the city of Portland by $13
million.
Geoffrey Donovan is giving a presentation on his research findings
Monday, March 17, 12:00 noon to 1:00 p.m., in the Portland Building
auditorium, 1120 S.W. 5th Avenue. The event is free and open to
the public. Donovan’s paper, “Trees and the City: Estimating
the Value of Street Trees in Portland, Oregon, Using Hedonic Evaluation,” has
been submitted for publication to the journal Land Economics and
Arborist News.
The Pacific Northwest Research Station is headquartered
in Portland, Ore., and has about 500 employees based in 11 laboratories
and
research centers located in Alaska, Oregon, and Washington.
###
|