The Smoking Gun: Giant Fans Cause UK House Prices to Collapse

A few posts back we covered the dramatic and adverse impact that giant fans have had on Scottish house prices in this post.

Faced with statements from real estate agents that homes with fans as neighbours are virtually unsaleable, Scottish Renewable’s spin-master, Joss Blamire – claimed that he hadn’t seen “any conclusive evidence which links house and land prices with onshore wind farms”.

As we noted, if Joss was in charge of the Scottish Distillers Association – and being challenged about the potentially intoxicating effects of Single Malt, say – in faithful service to his masters – he’d be hard pressed to find “any conclusive evidence” that could possibly link his clients’ products with singing (badly), dancing (very badly) or fighting (not quite as well as Muhammad Ali – who the intoxicated pugilist invariably thinks himself to be).

Well, maybe, just maybe, here’s the proof that Joss was having trouble finding.

The Daily Mail reports on a detailed study carried out by a Professor from the London School of Economics that proves the bleeding obvious.

No doubt, wind weasels and their parasites will bend over backwards to try and discredit the professor; the study; the houses studied; the people that lived in them; the real estate agents that sold them; and what all of them ate for breakfast.

A while back we covered a report on the impact giant fans have on Australian rural property prices – put together by highly experienced property valuer, Peter Reardon. Reardon compiled a 30-page dossier on the impacts of wind farms on adjoining or nearby rural farms and found that having fans as neighbours led to discounts of between “33 per cent and 60 per cent in the market place”. Wind weasels – sticking firmly to their script – went all out to pooh-pooh Reardon’s work with the usual hysterical howls of “there’s no proof” (see our post here).

But – for wind weasels – spinning away the mounting evidence of house prices collapsing when the fans go up (or even when a planning approval is granted) is getting harder by the day.

STT thinks the UK study compiled by the LSE’s Prof Gibbons looks a lot like a smoking gun.

Proof wind turbines take thousands off your home: Value of houses within 1.2 miles of large wind farms slashed by 11%, study finds
Daily Mail
Sanchez Manning
25 January 2014

• Study by LSE found value of homes close to wind farms slashed by 11%
• Home that costs £250,000 would lose £27,000 in value
• Homes as far at two-and-a-half miles away could be reduced by 3%

The presence of wind turbines near homes has wiped tens of thousands of pounds off their value, according to the first major study into the impact the eyesore structures have on house prices.

The study by the London School of Economics (LSE) – which looked at more than a million sales of properties close to wind farm sites over a 12-year period – found that values of homes within 1.2 miles of large wind farms were being slashed by about 11 per cent.

This means that if such a wind farm were near an average house in Britain, which now costs almost £250,000, it would lose more than £27,000 in value.

In sought-after rural idylls where property prices are higher, the financial damage is even more substantial. In villages around one of Southern England’s largest onshore developments – Little Cheyne Court Wind Farm in Romney Marsh, Kent, where homes can cost close to £1 million – house values could drop by more than £100,000.

The study further discovered that even a small wind farm that blighted views would hit house values.

Homes within half a mile of such visible turbines could be reduced in value by about seven per cent.

Even those in a two-and-a-half-mile radius experienced price reductions of around three per cent.

The report’s author, Professor Steve Gibbons, said his research was the first strong evidence that wind farms are harmful to house prices.

Prof Gibbons, director of the LSE’s Spatial Economics Research Centre, said: ‘Property prices are going up in places where they’re not visible and down in the places where they are.’

The study, which is still in draft form but is due to be published next month, focused on 150 wind-farm sites across England and Wales. It compared house-price changes in areas that had wind farms, were about to see one built or had seen one rejected by the local authority.

Last night Chris-Heaton Harris, MP for Daventry, said: ‘There’s plenty of anecdotal evidence – especially in my constituency – of house-price reductions near wind turbines. The question is, will anybody be liable for these losses in future?’

And Bob Ward, policy and communications director at the Grantham Research Institute on Climate Change and the Environment at the LSE, said: ‘These results are not really surprising as it is already known that people place a value on countryside views.’

A Department for Energy and Climate Change spokesman said: ‘Developments will only get permission where impacts are acceptable.’

A spokesman for Renewables UK, which represents the wind industry, said: ‘We will be analysing the conclusions closely when the final report is issued.’
Daily Mail

All makes perfect sense to STT.  But then again, common sense rarely needs an advocate.

No one in their right mind would line up to purchase a home with giant fans next door – that will drive them and their families nuts with incessant low-frequency noise and infra-sound. That’s if they can manage to tough it out at all.

Although, we have reported on fan-lovers who pitch tents underneath them just so they can cuddle up to them at night-time – but Dave Clarke of delusional “Ramblings” fame is more than just a little “special” (see our post here).