Articles Home Page

Landscaping Raises Home Prices

Research shows that the return on your landscape dollars can range between 70 and 200 percent when you sell your home. Investing in a professionally designed plan that showcases your home can help you sell more quickly in slow markets and at a high price range in average to hot markets. Landscaping adds significant benefits to a home, including attractiveness, energy conservation and screening. Conventional wisdom says that these benefits should translate into higher home values and sale prices.

To better define the value of landscaping, Clemson University researchers conducted a study of home sale prices and compared the value of otherwise similar homes with varying levels of landscape quality. To do so, they obtained the sale prices of 218 single-family homes in Greensville, S.C., and correlated them with various characteristics including lot size and quality of landscaping of the homes in question as well as adjacent properties. Not only were the types, sizes and conditions of plants considered, but also the overall design. Thus, by the researchers' own admission, certain subjective elements entered the evaluation. Landscapes were rated "poor," "average," "good" or "excellent."

The results confirm that better landscapes result in higher home values. Homes with "good" landscapes were valued 4 to 5 percent higher than those with "average" landscapes, and those with "excellent" landscapes showed a 6 to 7 percent increase in value over those that were "good."  The researchers also combined the "poor" and "average" categories and the "good" and "excellent" categories. The difference between "poor-to-average" landscapes and "good-to-excellent" ones amounted to 14 to 17 percent of home value, depending on lot size.

Homes adjacent to properties with less than "excellent" landscapes had slightly lower value, amounting to a reduction of about $1,000 to $2,000.

The researchers caution that the results of this study may not apply to other regions, where greater or lesser value may be placed on landscapes. However, results such as these provide more concrete estimates of the return on investment that a landscape can bring, and confirm the financial wisdom of a good landscape.

Excerpt from Grounds Maintenance,
August 1999 issue, p.50.