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Say What? This Surprising Factor Could Hurt Your Home’s Sale Price
By Leslie Cook MONEY RESEARCH COLLECTIVE
New research investigated the impact of noise pollution in neighborhoods near major airports. The conclusion? Even a one-decibel increase in noise levels decreases prices by 0.6% to 1%.
If you live close to an airport, the roar of passing jets is more than just a noisy nuisance — it could be quietly eating away at your home’s value.
A working paper published this week by the National Bureau of Economic Research looked into the impact of noise pollution on home prices in neighborhoods located close to major airports. It found that a one-decibel increase in noise levels results in prices falling by 0.6% to 1%.
That may not seem like a lot, but consider that modern commercial aircraft — which are purposely designed to reduce noise — generate between 75 and 80 decibels of additional noise during landing, with higher levels during takeoffs. Major airports can see thousands of planes taking off and landing every day, so the frustration factor (and the price hit) can be pretty high.
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View RatesAccording to Stephanie Crawford, a real estate agent and founder of the Brokers Cooperative in Nashville, Tennessee, noise pollution can reduce home prices by 10% to 20% for homes located within three miles of an airport. Considering that the nationwide median home price is about $415,000, the loss of value can be significant.
The uproar over the noise has led to a series of lawsuits against the Federal Aviation Administration, or FAA, especially after the government agency changed flight paths in 2013. The new routes concentrated more traffic into narrower lanes, producing higher and more frequent flyovers.
In 2015, homeowners in Phoenix sued the FAA over increased noise pollution, eventually winning the case and leading to a return to the previous takeoff and landing routes. A similar lawsuit was filed by the state of Maryland in 2017. Earlier this year, two townships in New York state sued the FAA, alleging excessive noise and pollution from the John F. Kennedy and LaGuardia Airports.
Why location still rules — even when close to an airport
In a housing market where concerns over affordability and a lack of significant buyer interest are leading sellers to cut prices, the last thing a homeowner needs is another reason their home might not be worth as much as they hope.
As with everything real estate, location is key. The exact impact on prices will depend on where your home is located in relation to flight paths, or the routes planes take when taking off or landing.
“The biggest factor isn’t how close you are to the runway,” says Crawford, who actually lives in a flight path. “It’s whether you’re directly under approach routes, where planes are lower and louder.”
This means not everyone residing next to a busy travel hub will be negatively affected. Homes near airports and not directly under the primary flight paths will have less noise pollution and could even be attractive to prospective buyers who are also frequent travelers, mitigating any potential loss in value or even leading to higher home prices.
But Nathan Richardson, founder of the digital real estate platform CashForHome.com, says he has noticed that listings near busy airports often attract less buyer attention, take longer to sell and involve more price negotiations.
How prospective buyers view these properties affects more than just price, Richardson adds. People tend to link homes near busy airports with greater stress, poorer sleep patterns and higher levels of air pollution, even though the data on how high noise levels actually affect people’s mental health is mixed.
“Once that stigma exists in a neighborhood, it’s hard to reverse,” Richardson says.
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Leslie Cook is Money's lead real estate editor, covering news stories about mortgages and how rate movements affect the housing market and writing and editing stories that inform our readers about real estate trends and how they affect homebuyers and sellers. Leslie writes a weekly newsletter, Money Moves, that covers a wide range of real estate topics in addition to her weekly articles. Her work has been featured on Apple News, MSN and ConsumersAdvocate.org. Leslie has been covering the mortgage and real estate industry at Money since 2019 and has interviewed industry leaders, such as Lawrence Yun, chief economist at the National Association of Realtors, and Glenn Kelman, CEO of brokerage Redfin. She has been a guest on the This Morning with Gordon Deal radio show, interviewed by The Mortgage Note, and served as moderator for ServiceLink’s State of Homebuying webinar. While at Money, Leslie has contributed to several of Money’s rating and ranking features, including Best Places to Live, Best Places to Travel and Changemakers. She has also played a major role in researching and selecting Money’s Best Banks rankings for the past four years. Before joining Money as a staff writer, Leslie was a reporter for Caribbean Business Newspaper in San Juan, Puerto Rico, covering human resources, telecommunications and computers. She graduated cum laude from Bryn Mawr College in Pennsylvania with a bachelor’s degree in history. The research and interviewing skills learned there have contributed to Leslie’s ability to provide accurate information on her area of expertise and elicit informative responses from her interviewees.