The impact of on-shore and off-shore wind turbine farms on property prices

We present the results of a large-scale analysis on how on-shore and off-shore wind turbines affect the property prices of nearby single family residential and vacation homes in Denmark. We find that on-shore wind turbines negatively affect the price of surrounding properties to a distance of three kilometers. The negative impact increases with the number of wind turbines at a declining marginal rate but declines with distance. In the case of off-shore wind turbine farms, we do not find a significant effect of having an off-shore wind farm in view from a property itself or from the nearest beach, likely because the closest off-shore turbine is 9 km from the closest traded home. We illustrate the policy relevance of our findings by providing maps showing how the marginal impact of a wind turbine varies across the landscape according to the spatial distribution of home density and homes values in the proximity of a wind turbine site. The results suggest that ceteris paribus, wind turbine farms should be built quite far away from residential areas with turbines gathered in larger wind farms rather than installed as single turbines.