You may remember Walk Score — the service that calculates the walkability of a neighborhood or location (shown above). Specifically, it measures and rates the number of destinations, including libraries, parks and coffee shops, within walking distance of a home, using a a 100-point scale.
And now, the developers of Walk Score are launching a correspondent tool, called Transit Score, that uses transit agency scheduling data to create a new index. This time, it rates how good the public transit service is for any property in the U.S., taking into account factors like how far you’d have to walk to get to the nearest bus/train stop, and how often buses and trains arrive once you do get there. The creators of Walk Score, a company called Front Seat, have also partnered with Chicago’s Center for Neighborhood Technology to release an app that calculates exactly how much you spend on transportation, no matter what form you use.
So are apps like this getting big enough to guide decisions on home-buying?
Front Seat has certainly been working on it. Specifically, they’ve been targeting their index toward real estate listings, in a push to get homebuyers to begin factoring walkability — and now, public transit usability — into actual home purchases. Walk scores are now visible on around 3 million listings a day on sites like Zillow. Granted, whether they’re driving or discouraging purchases remains to be seen: As Matt Lerner, the Chief Technology Officer of Front Seat, told us, “It’s very hard for us to measure the impact of [Walk Scores] on actual purchases. We haven’t isolated the impact yet.” [SButtonZ button="digg"] Some data has shown that homes with high Walk Scores command higher prices, but a clear link between the two has yet to be drawn.
In other words, the data isn’t there yet. But give it a few years, and some may be available — Walk Scores are most common in urban areas, which tend to have a large volume of real estate turnover. And as home buyers start to realize that the old tropes — like “suburbs are cheaper” — simply aren’t true, and that transportation can seriously suck up your budget, perhaps they’ll start choosing homes accordingly.
Tags: Commuting, Sustainability
“Some data has shown that homes with high Walk Scores command higher prices, but a clear link between the two has yet to be drawn.”
Really? A clear link has yet to be drawn between property values and walkability? Could it really be that hard to demonstrate that homes near locations with a high density of retail, grocery stores, restaurants, and other commercial businesses are going to tend to be on the pricy side? Actually, I imagine it is the other way around. Businesses are going to want to set up shop in areas that have a high density of upper economic, socially engaged public. I know that this is true in Dallas/Ft. Worth, my home town. The areas that are the greenest on the walkability map are going to be much pricier per sq. foot then places in the red areas.
If and when we sell our home, you can bet I’m going to be splashing the “Walkability score = 81, 95th percentile in Dallas/Ft. Worth” very large on the advertisement.
Heck, that’s why I bought the place three years ago.
I would have to say I am a bit disappointed in the power of the Walk Score to help guide the decision in the purchase of a home. My sister is buying her first house and she is heading straight to an exurb. Her realty company proudly displays Walk Scores on their website. She is not at all impressed by its indicators, as she is purchasing her home like she is purchasing food at Wal-Mart. Its all about unit per price for her.
If we carry the analogy forward, the “unit” of priority is square feet. Why buy something at 1,500 sq ft home for $200 a square foot when in the exurb a 3,000 sq ft home is $100 a square foot. Nutritionists ask the same question of food purchases: why buy canned, salty and high fat food when you could buy healthy food. Its a function of unit per price on the wallet. Walk Score is supposed the “nutrition label” of sorts on a location; a tool to quantify the possibility of walking to destinations, and in my opinion a good indicator of community and livability. My sister in this case is simply overcome with the ability to buy that much square feet, just like a family is overcome with the ability to fill their children’s bellies with food for half the cost, regardless of the health effects.
While this is anecdotal to me and my sister, I think the analogy is could be generalized across the population. I certainly wouldn’t say Walk Score isn’t without value, just as I wouldn’t say nutrition labels are without value because consumers ignore them. It is still a useful tool to the folks who take the time understand them and use them. I think planners need to do a better job promoting Walk Scores and now Transit Scores to help better educate folks in their home purchases. I think Walk Score also has an obligation to better tweak their scores, as the house my sister is considering got a score of 65 and there isn’t a sidewalk in a mile. Finally, as planners we need to do a better job quantitatively and qualitatively describing the value of other variables that affect home purchases. For example, time and petrol “lost” in congestion figures on the magnitude of billions region by region, simply have done a thing to move people towards livable and walkable communities.
I guess my last tactic will have to be an ad nauseum argument that the “savings” on her $100 a sq ft 3,000 sq ft home is going to evaporate with her 109 mile a day roundtrip commute. Over $3,000 a year for gas alone for the car she drives and the traffic she’ll experience. 26,000+ annually (a trip around the earth). An oil change every 45 days. Etc.
t joey,
I know how you feel about the ex-urbs, but you have to understand that new-urbanists are fighting against a three generations of advertising and propaganda. I read once that it takes 3 generations to change a culture. 3 generations ago, Americans believed in virtues like thrift, responsibility, and community. That was three generations ago. And it’ll take three generations to get back. Right now, I’ld put us at half way through the first.
It’s not going to change very quickly -unless of course there is a reason to change quickly like a sharp rise in gas prices.
Another anecdote here, but I checked the walk score on the house I just bought – there were several errors and problems with obsolete data. The grocery store down the street that improved walkability had been long shuttered and covered in grafitti. The ‘clothing store’ was a screenprinter with a small store front for overrun novelty tee shirts. These are not the kinds of amenities that should contribute to a high walkability score.
Some old/bad data is to be expected, but when I zoomed in on places I know well it gave a pretty skewed view of the situation. I hope they can get better on this front or these tools won’t be very useful.
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I think Walk Score is a great too. Any tools that make it easier for folks to easily understand all of the aspects that go with the purchase of a home. More work needs to be done on commuting tools, where you put in your workplace address and view the impact it has on the total price of home ownership. I did use Walk Score when I was looking for a house two years ago. Ended up with a “streetcar suburb” house with a score of 85 and great transit options.
Just curious, t joey, has your sister computed the differential commuting costs on a monthly basis and added that to the mortgage costs? 109 miles round trip is obscene. I would end myself.