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@Lance your assumption is that the only increase in value due to commercial proximity is if you can actually use your property for that reason. That's flawed. The availability of services in a neighborhood is directly related to its desirability and hence its value.

Have residences abutting U Street become more or less valuable in the last 15 years?

Can you think of any area where commercial development has caused nearby residential property values to decline rather than increase?

Even for individual cases of the single property abutting a new commercial conversion: do you think that the residence immediately abutting, for example, Red Rocks is more or less valuable since RR opened?

Let's look at 3331 11th Street, two doors down, which I have watched for the last few years.

Most recently sold for $510K. Zillow shows the listing at $399, and it was offered at $350 when I first moved to Columbia Heights. In 2008 it sold for $385.

When I looked at it, it had had many improvements done but the work wasn't finished, so I assume it was renovated completely when they sold it for $510. And this is even as the real estate market generally has gone to crap.

Then look up and down the block, there's no trend in variation in sold prices based on proximity to Red Rocks.

http://www.zillow.com/homedetails/3331-11th-St-NW-Washington-DC-20010/473006_zpid/

I am sure that there's some incremental hit in value to directly abutting a bar/restaurant, but that would only be measurable if the market was perfect: each property on the block was the same, and there were enough on the market at any given time to make a direct comparison reasonable.

This never happens in reality. I am sure that being next to a bar/restaurant will have some minor effect on the price you can get for your house, but it's far less than the benefit that the entire neighborhood (which includes you) will see from that.

Red Rocks and Meridian Pint have unquestionably had a dramatic effect on the "peace and quiet" around 11th and Park.

I don't see anyone complaining.

In places like Dupont, a new restaurant is a drop in the bucket and there will be no such effect anyway.

by Jamie on Dec 1, 2010 11:35 am • link • report