Trees in the city: estimating the value of street trees in Portland, Oregon using hedonic valuation

Published

February 28, 2010

Author(s)

Geoffrey Donovan, David Butry

Abstract

We use a hedonic model to simultaneously estimate the effects of street trees on the sales price and the time on market of houses in Portland Oregon. On average, street trees add $7020 to sales price and reduce time on the market by 1.9 days. Extrapolating to the whole city, street trees increase property values by $1.1 billion, which is equivalent to annual benefits of $45 million assuming a 4 % discount rate. In addition, we found that the benefits of street trees spill over to neighboring houses, which implies that if the provision and maintenance of street trees is left solely to homeowners, as it is now, then there will be too few street trees in Portland from a community perspective.

Citation

Landscape and Urban Planning

Volume

94

Issue

2

Pub Type

Journals

Keywords

street trees, urban forestry, hedonic valuation, Portland, Oregon

Citation

Donovan, G. and Butry, D. (2010), Trees in the city: estimating the value of street trees in Portland, Oregon using hedonic valuation, Landscape and Urban Planning (Accessed December 13, 2024)