Most striking is that the apparent trend toward some property value effect largely mirrors surveys of residents near wind farms. The “problem” in interpreting this data and the surveys is that there is NOT a universal increase in annoyance or sleeplessness or dropping property values as you move closer to turbines; rather, there is an increasing MINORITY of neighbors who are negatively impacted. Again, see several posts at the AEInews.org site for more discussion of this; from 10% of neighbors at around a mile or so, increasing to 25% or so at a half mile, and perhaps 40% at a quarter mile, we are seeing the well-known individual variability in susceptibility to noise. It seems likely that the “small and infrequent” numbers of homes negatively affected in the study addressed here, are mostly concentrated near turbines, and may represent a similar percentage of landowners as report sleep disturbance and other noise impacts. If so, the 5% average price hit is apt to represent a much larger valuation drop in a quarter or so of the homes that are within a mile.

The authors of this study DID suggest that a top priority for further study is to focus on areas closest to wind farms; the challenge will be getting a large enough data set to cross the statistical significance threshold.