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Waterfront Sites Add Most Value in NAHB House Price Estimator
Providing information on what makes some properties more expensive than others or why a home in one part of town can cost much more than the same home in another location, a new online model from NAHB lets users plug in a variety of home and location characteristics to determine their value.
Created by the association’s Housing Economics department, the house price estimator is based on data from the American Housing Survey (AHS), a nationally representative survey of about 60,000 housing units conducted by the U.S. Census Bureau in odd-numbered years.
Based on this information, NAHB found that waterfront locations have the most significant positive effect on home values in every Census region and in every type of setting. For example, a waterfront location raises the value of a standard home in a Midwestern suburb by 43% or $92,000, and the value of a standard home in the nonmetropolitan South by 44%, or $75,000. In the central city of a large California metro area, being on the water raises the value of a standard home by 41% or $243,000.
An abandoned building within one-half block or roughly 300 feet is the characteristic with the largest negative impact on value, knocking down the worth of a standard home in a Midwestern suburb from an estimated $212,137 to $188,805. Bothersome trash, industrial buildings, inadequate shopping and bad roads also have significant negative effects on the price of a home.
The house price estimations for each Census region are based on the value of a single-family detached home built after 2003 in a neighborhood with no specific amenities or drawbacks and the following characteristics:
- 1,850 square feet of living space
- Two full bathrooms (no half bath)
- Three bedrooms
- A dining room
- Two miscellaneous rooms (i.e., rooms other than a bedroom, bath or dining room)
- A basement
- A garage
- A fireplace
To learn more about the house price estimator, or to explore the price effects of other house features and location characteristics, check out the model online.
Running the house price estimator requires a computer with a reasonably recent version of Microsoft Excel. In addition, Excel’s security setting must be set to either “low” or “medium.” Once this is done, it’s possible to access the NAHB model; specify a home’s age, features, location and neighborhood characteristics; and generate an estimated house price.
 Want to Know the Long-Term Forecast Through 2015?
Find out in HousingEconomics.com’s Long-Term Forecast.
HousingEconomics.com includes downloadable Excel tables featuring the housing starts forecast, GDP, demographics and more.
To learn more, visit www.housingeconomics.com.
 NAHB Kit Gives Builders Back-to-Basics Tips in Changing Market
With the current cooling of the nation’s housing market expected to persist into the middle of next year, NAHB has developed a comprehensive online toolkit geared to providing association members with information that will help them prosper in today’s changing business environment.
To access the “Back to Basics” toolkit, you must be an NAHB member and have a login to www.nahb.org. To create a login, go to www.nahb.org/login or click on the log-in button on the main menu bar.
For assistance, call the NAHB Member Service Center at 800-368-5242.
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