Many of us are familiar with Trulia or its parent company, Zillow Group. Before moving to the Triangle, I spent countless hours combing through apartment listings on their website, reading characteristics of various neighborhoods and calculating possible commute times.
In addition to helping with housing searches, Trulia is also a source for data on housing affordability and home price history. According to their blog, “some of the nation’s least affordable markets are also ground zero for the fight against building affordable housing – which opponents say, among other things, depreciates nearby home values.” Wanting to determine whether this was indeed cause for concern, Trulia conducted an analysis of low-income housing developed in the country’s 20 most expensive housing markets.
The result? Data showed that low-income housing has no significant effect on nearby home values. In fact, in Denver, the value of homes located near affordable housing actually went up after a project was completed. While there are a few exceptions to the findings, homeowners can largely rest assured that property values won’t fluctuate as a result of new affordable housing being built in their neighborhoods.
To learn more, the full article can be viewed here: There Doesn’t Go The Neighborhood: Low-Income Housing Has No Impact on Nearby Home Values.
Rachel Zeitler, advocacy and societal impact manager for Habitat Wake, contributed this post.