Speed Bumps: Broken Cars, Noisy Streets and Impacts on Property Values
Presentation
Overview
Overview
Description
Newly installed speed bumps invite a plethora of responses from proximate homeowners, drivers, and policymakers: nearby homeowners, particularly those with small children, may celebrate the installation as a tangible contributor to increased traffic safety with slower speeds – other homeowners may lament the bumps as a detriment to the quality of life (and home values) for those living nearby; most drivers are annoyed by speed bumps, for their intrusive abbreviation of a car’s progress and potential damage to a car’s suspension; policymakers may celebrate the speed bumps as evidence of their concern for homeowner’s and traffic safety, but more enlightened public employees might appreciate the negative externality that the speed bump becomes as nearby home values and qualities of life decline, if modestly. Contemplating the traversal of said impediment dozens of times each week and the noise that attaches to speed bumps as cars approach and exit the speed bump, prospective homeowners may reject a home “with bumps.” No widely-circulating study, however, measures the property-value impacts of speed bumps. This study seeks to fill that void. Initial evidence suggests that speed bumps adversely impact nearby property values, after controlling for other factors that influence home prices. Findings are meaningful to the prospective homeowner, the home seller, public policymakers (who decide whether or not to install speed bumps), the real estate investor and the mortgage lender. Each of these parties is clearly a stakeholder in the home whose value is impacted by speed bumps, and each benefit from this study’s findings.
