Anyone even remotely connected to real estate knows that location is everything, including proximity to highways (not too close) and transit (walkable). Redfin is trying to quantify just that.
Redfin looked at the sale prices and Transit Score ratings of more than one million homes sold between January 2014 and April 2016 across 14 major metro areas. Transit Score measures the usefulness and convenience of public transportation (bus, subway, light rail, ferry, etc.) routes near a given location. And it found that one Transit ScoreⓇ point can increase the price of a home by an average of $2,040 or 0.6%.
Of the 14 metro areas included in the analysis, one Transit Score point is worth the most, as a percentage of the median sale price, in Atlanta. There, one Transit Score point is worth $1,901, or 1.13%, on average. After Atlanta, a point of Transit Score carries the highest value in Boston (1.10%) and Washington, D.C. (0.96%).
On the other hand, in Orange County, proximity to transit makes a home less valuable. They like to drive there.
“Transit is an important building block to economic mobility,” said Redfin chief economist Nela Richardson. “The more that cities invest in good transit, the bigger financial impact for homeowners and the better access families of all incomes have to jobs and public amenities. Transit is an economic win-win for communities.”
