Green Infrastructure, Home Values, Land Value Capture, and Equitable Property Assessment

Climate change has necessitated innovative approaches to financing storm water mitigation in coastal communities throughout the world. We study how adding bioswales near residential properties in New Haven, CT would impact property values. New Haven has extensively implemented bioswales and maintains an excellent geospatial dataset on their locations and dates of installation. We show that there is approximately an 8.8 percent increase in residential property prices due to the presence of nearby bioswales. We also explain that the incremental property value increases from additional bioswale proximity can be used in a reassessment leading to a value capture type of approach for financing the additional bioswales, with the potential for raising $1.38 million if the full increase in property values due to adding additional bioswales were to be captured. Finally, we use International Association of Assessing Officers (2013) standards to determine that the proposed reassessment would be non-regressive. Our approach could be useful to planners, engineers, and assessors in New Haven and other cities considering green stormwater infrastructure as one way to combat climate change.