Shining Sunlight On Solar Developer's Misinformation - Property Values
Curious About Those Studies Developers Claim Support Their Claim Of No Property Value Loss?
Below is text that has been taken verbatim from a number of studies developers love to claim prove their point of no property value loss. I encourage you to read this post, then read these studies for yourself. You will find a very different story that developers, advocates, and pundits are trying to spin in communities throughout the US.
2025 – Virginia Tech:
Impact of large-scale solar on property values in the United States: Diverse effects and causal mechanisms
· We estimate the impact of largescale solar on property prices and the underlying pathways using 8.8 million sales and 3,699 solar sites in the United States.
· Difference-in-differences estimates show that LSSPV (solar development) significantly increases agricultural or vacant land value by about 19.4% within a 2-mile radius, while simultaneously reducing residential property values within 3 miles by about 4.8%.
· We find that, without LSSPV view, LSSPV proximity reduces residential sales price by up to 7.2% within a 0.5-mile radius, and the bin-specific estimates gradually decrease with distance and remain statistically significant up to 3 miles from the LSSPV site.
· Evidence indicates that the negative impact on residential values might mainly stem from negative perceptions, but channels through physical conditions cannot be entirely dismissed.
· LSSPV facilities can significantly alter local amenities in residential areas. Recent studies suggest that proximity to a solar site may reduce home values due to diminished amenities such as adverse visual impact.
· Our findings reveal that LSSPV installations negatively affect the value of residential properties located within 3 miles, while increasing prices for agricultural and vacant land within 2 miles.
· We establish a visibility database for LSSPV across the continental United States and investigate the property value effect of LSSPV visibility. We calculate the visibility from residential properties to large-scale solar sites within 6 miles.
2023 – Lawrence Berkley National Laboratory
Shedding light on large-scale solar impacts: An analysis of property values and proximity to photovoltaics across six U.S. states
· Our analysis of over 1,500 LSPVPs and over 1.8 million home transactions
· 1.8 million residential property transactions that occurred within six years before and after a LSPVP was constructed in the five U.S. states with the highest concentration of LSPVPs as measured by number of installations: California (CA), Massachusetts (MA), Minnesota (MN), North Carolina (NC), and New Jersey (NJ), as well as in Connecticut (CT), chosen for its relatively high population density (i.e., urbanicity) near LSPVPs.
· We find that homes within 0.5 mi of a LSPVP experience an average home price reduction of 1.5% compared to homes 2–4 mi away; STATISTICALLY SIGNIFICANT effects are not measurable over 1 mi from a LSPVP
· The property value impacts of LSPVPs have received only recent, limited attention (Abashidze, 2019; Al-Hamoodah et al., 2018; Dr¨oes and Koster, 2021; Gaur and Lang [PROPERTY VALUE IMPACTS OF COMMERCIAL-SCALE SOLAR ENERGY IN MASSACHUSETTS AND RHODE ISLAND], 2020; Jarvis, 2021). Studies on LSPVPs and property values employing difference-in-differences (DiD) analyses find mixed results. Studies based in the U.S., specifically, MA and RI (Gaur and Lang, 2020) and NC (Abashidze, 2019), and the Netherlands (Dr¨oes and Koster, 2021), find a STATISTICALLY SIGNIFICANT negative effect for homes near solar projects compared to homes further away.
· As shown in Table 5, which shows base model results for individual states, changes in sales price are not statistically significant for CA, CT, and MA. However, MN, NC, and NJ, show a STATISTICALLY SIGNIFICANT negative effect of 4%–5.6%, more than double that of the average across all states in the base model.
· When looking at individual states in our sample, we observe no effect on sales prices in CA, CT, and MA, but find sale price reductions for homes 0–0.5 mi away from a LSPVP of 4%, 5.8%, and 5.6% in MN, NC, and NJ, respectively.
· we additionally find an average 2.3% reduction in home prices within 0.25 mi of a LSPVP
· we find an average 1.5% reduction in house prices for homes within 0.5 miles of a LSPVP
· an average 0.82% reduction in home prices for homes 0.5–1 mi away from a LSPVP
· These findings are consistent with the results in Table 7, which shows that STATISTICALLY SIGNIFICANT effects were only observed for homes located in rural areas.
· To our knowledge, only Gaur and Lang [PROPERTY VALUE IMPACTS OF COMMERCIAL-SCALE SOLAR ENERGY IN MASSACHUSETTS AND RHODE ISLAND] (2020) investigate the impact of prior land use using a DiD framework, finding that greenfield solar construction is associated with a STATISTICALLY SIGNIFICANT reduction in sale prices in both rural and non-rural areas, with greater reductions observed in rural areas.
· Our estimates are robust to choices of time FEs (fixed effects) and we control for other landscape characteristics that could impact property values. Our results are consistent with some prior literature (Dr¨oes and Koster, 2021; Gaur and Lang, PROPERTY VALUE IMPACTS OF COMMERCIAL-SCALE SOLAR ENERGY IN MASSACHUSETTS AND RHODE ISLAND] 2020) that find an overall adverse impact of LSPVP construction on property values.
· Our observed heterogeneity may reflect how large, agricultural, or rural developments potentially conflict more directly with those representations than smaller, non-agricultural, or urban developments.
· When separating transactions by the prior land use and the area of the LSPVP to which they are closest, as well as by the urbanicity of the home, we observe STATISTICALLY SIGNIFICANT effects only for transactions near LSPVPs sited on previously agricultural land, transactions in rural areas, and transactions near larger LSPVPs by area. We observe decreases of 3%, 4.2%, and 3.1% for homes within 0–0.5 mi of LSPVPs on previously agricultural land, in rural areas, or near large LSPVPs, respectively, compared to homes 2–4 mi away.
· Second, more research is needed to understand the heterogeneity that we observe with respect to larger, agricultural, and rural LSPVPs. Here, surveys, qualitative research, mixed-methods, and case study-based approaches may indicate how neighbors of LSPVPs engage differently with their nearby solar installation based on its size, land use, or the urbanicity of their home. Our results suggest that there are adverse property value impacts of LSPVP construction for homes very close to a LSPVP and those predominantly in rural agricultural settings around larger projects.
2020 – University of Rhode Island
PROPERTY VALUE IMPACTS OF COMMERCIAL-SCALE SOLAR ENERGY IN MASSACHUSETTS AND RHODE ISLAND
· results suggest that houses within one mile depreciate 1.7% following construction of a solar array,
· with respect to proximity, we find substantially larger negative impacts on homes located within 0.1 mile of solar installations (-7.0%).
· The results suggest that the overall negative effects of solar arrays on nearby property values are driven by farm and forest sites in non-rural areas (non-rural is most akin to suburban, as there are very few solar sites in urban areas).
· we estimate a net loss of $1.66 billion in aggregate housing value due to proximate solar installations in MA and RI.
· We hypothesize that prior land use may affect property value impacts. Specifically, houses in proximity to farms and forests that are developed into solar may depreciate more than houses in proximity to a brownfield or capped landfill that is developed into solar.4 Since farms, forests, and other open space are amenities and boost home values (Irwin, 2002; Lang, 2018), conversion of these types of lands may lead to larger price decreases because it is the combination of a loss of amenities and the gain of disamenities.
2018 – The University of Texas at Austin
An Exploration of Property-Value Impacts Near Utility-Scale Solar Installations
· We distributed an online survey to public sector property assessors in 430 unique counties identified by the EIA Form 860 data as having at least one utility-scale solar PV installation.
· We ultimately selected assessors, or appraisers hired by the public sector (herein referred to jointly as “assessors”), because of their work as public servants responsible for providing assessments of property values, in accordance with professional standards.
· Of the respondents that elected to participate, all were current assessors with between two years and over 40 years of assessment experience, and a mean of 21 years.
· The majority of respondents have completed a residential home assessment within the last two years (77 percent).
· Almost all respondents have completed a residential home assessment since a solar facility came online in their county (91 percent).
· About half of respondents that provided an answer indicated they had assessed a home near a utility-scale solar installation (45 percent), while the remainder had not (55 percent).
· Only one respondent (5percent) had actually adjusted the value of a home based on the presence of a solar installation, while 21 (95 percent) had not, with the remainder declining to answer.
· Of the approximately 400 assessors contacted via email, 37 consented to participate in the survey (a 10 percent response rate, approximately). Survey respondents were geographically dispersed across the United States, and represented 23 states of the 42 known to have utilityscale solar facilities, according to the EIA Form 860. North Carolina provided the most respondents (8), followed by Florida (3), Massachusetts (2), Connecticut (2) and Utah (2).
· These findings highlight that larger facilities tend to be sited in areas with lower incomes.
· While not definitive, these findings raise preliminary concerns regarding equity in the locating of utility-scale solar. Our analyses suggest that the largest utility-scale solar facilities are most likely to be located in areas where residents earn lower incomes than the national average.
· With the rapid expansion of utility-scale solar, our research suggests that property value impacts, whether positive, neutral or negative, could disproportionately affect homeowner’s with lower incomes.
· Our regression models suggested that estimates were more negative at closer proximity to the installation, with greater installation size, and when provided by assessors that had not previously assessed a home near a utility-scale solar facility.
Table D.4 Estimates of Property Value Impacts (%) – 1.5MW Facility
o 100 feet - 11%
o 500 feet – 7%
o 1000 feet – 2%
o ½ mile – 0%
Table D.5 Estimates of Property Value Impacts (%) – 20MW Facility
o 100 feet – 20%
o 500 feet – 15%
o 1000 feet – 5%
o ½ mile – 0%
Table D.6 Estimates of Property Value Impacts (%) – 102MW Facility
o 100 feet – 25%
o 500 feet – 20%
o 1000 feet – 5%
o ½ mile – 0%
· Appendix D.7 - If this impact were the true impact and the home values were the same for the whole county, then the results suggest that being located 100 feet from a 20MW solar installation would be associated with a $26,252 decline in home value, on average.