Location, regional accessibility, and price effects: Evidence from home sales in Hennepin County, Minnesota

Regional location factors exert a strong influence on urban property markets, and measures of accessibility are foremost among them. More local influences, such as proximity to urban highway links, also may positively or negatively influence the desirability of a location. This study used a cross section of home sales in Hennepin County, Minnesota, from the years 2001 through 2004, along with a set of disaggregate regional accessibility measures, to estimate the value of access to employment and resident workers. The effects, whether as amenity or disamenity, were estimated for locations near major freeway links that had recently under-gone major construction to add capacity (or were scheduled to undergo such construction) at the time of the home sales. The richness of the home sales data set allowed for control of a number of structural attributes, as well as some site characteristics. Additional neighborhood characteristics (such as income levels and local educational quality) were added from supplemental data sources. Empirical results indicated that households highly valued access to employment. Access to other resident workers (i.e., competition for jobs) was considered a disamenity. Proximity to local highway access points associated positively with sale price, whereas proximity to the highway link itself associated negatively with that price. The study concluded with some implications for research and practice of the concept and measurement of the relationship between location and land value.