Does walkability add to the value of your home?

Posted November 20th, 2009 by Dave Reaville

Walk Score is an Internet tool that lets people discover how pedestrian-friendly their neighborhood is. Walk Score ranks neighborhood 'walkability' based on the mix of stores and services that are within walking distance of any home in North America. If you haven't already, you should check it out -- but only if you've got nothing pressing to do, since it's pretty addictive.

It's fun to see how your neighborhood ranks, but does it mean anything for real estate values? Are people really willing to pay more to live in a place where they can do daily errands on foot, rather than in a car? According to Walking the Walk, a recently released report from CEOs for Cities the answer is an emphatic yes: people value walkable neighborhoods so much that, holding everything else constant, each additional Walk Score point adds somewhere between $500 and $3,000 to the value of a home.