RICS Report 2004 - Key statement- "67% of estate agents think prices fall at planning stage and negative impact continues but becomes less severe after two years or so after completion"

Method - This study was done by the Royal Institute of Chartered Surveyors by contacting estate agents and asking them what the impact of a wind farm was on house prices and land prices. 60% said that house prices decrease when the turbines are within view and 67% say that the decrease starts when the planning application is submitted. This must mean that 67% think that house prices fall. They say the negative impact on property values continues but becomes less severe two years or so after completion. ( This could be 4 years in total allowing for time taken for construction).

The full report is available here

This is often turned around by the wind farm industry who quote the results as "a significant minority (40%) thought there was no impact on house prices". The figure should be 33% because 67% say house prices fall with the planning application. The 33% may also include don't knows as well as those who think there is no impact.

RICS Report 2007 - "Insofar as there was any impact on prices, the results show that it is most noticeable for terraced houses,with there being a significant impact on properties located within a mile of a wind farm"

Method - Rather than asking the opinion of estate agents this study looked at the price that homes actually sold for. On the face of it a more rigorous approach. But on closer examination you find that all homes worth more than £400k were excluded. This would mean that mostly detached houses were excluded. The study found that terraced houses within 1 mile of a turbine were 54% lower value and semi detached were 35% lower than houses at 4 miles distance. The findings were then dismissed because some of the houses within one mile at one of the wind farm sites were ex-MOD properties. Surely they knew this before they started the study, so why do it if the results will then be discounted.

Read the full report for yourself

and this review which exposes the full extent of the manipulation of the facts

The wind farm industry spin from this concludes - the effect seems much less marked - if at all for detached properties. But then they had excluded houses over £400k and this would mostly be detached houses.

Crystal Rig Study 2007 "The study finds no evidence of a relationship between proximity to a wind farm ( 7 miles away) and changes in property prices. Over the seven year period the average price of property in Dunbar grew by 132.8%, slightly above the regional average of 125.0% recorded across East Lothian"

A very thorough piece of research work, every house sale over a seven year period was examined and the house price trend between East Lothian and the Dunbar area were compared. The nearby wind farm in the study is Crystal Rig. When you look at a map or visit the site as one of our team has done you wonder why so much effort was put into the study. Dunbar is 7 miles from the wind farm. They may as well have looked at the effect of a wind farm near Sherburn on house prices in Ferrybridge. At the time of the study few if any turbines could be seen from Dunbar so why would the house prices be affected 7 miles away. Our concern is about for the value of homes with turbines within half a mile, one mile or two miles.

Read the full report here

A reference to the 2004 RICS study says that it indicted wind farms may have a slight negative effect on nearby house prices. They report that the Crystal Rig study does not offer any evidence to support the hypothesis- this is true, they don't have any data at all about nearby house prices( say within 3 miles) , the study was done on prices of homes 7 miles away from the wind farm. The study is totally irrelevant to our locations.

Modeling the impact of wind farms on house prices in the UK - 2008 - "The results found some evidence to suggest that the view of the surrounding environment from a property could influence selling price, although there is no clear relationships between having a view of the wind farm and a reduction in value"

A follow up study of the ex MOD properties that were discounted from the 2007 RICS survey above. Twenty pages of obfuscation - terms such as hedonic modeling, one-sample Kolmororov-smirnov test abound. It takes 9 pages to reach the revelation that there is a difference between the price of a semi and a terraced property and that the number of bedrooms affects sale price. The turbines in the study were only 60 metres high ( less than half the height of those we are concerned about) and no house had a view of more than two turbines. Many of our houses will have a view of 10 or more turbines which are twice as large, you will be able to see up to the full 30 turbines from some homes.

Read the full report here

The inclusion of charts which show the opinion of residents in Scotland is misleading and not relevant to the study in Cornwall. The data refers to people living within 20Km of a wind farm and shows 55% seeing no problem from there being a wind farm - this may be true but 75% of the sample would live more than 10km from the nearest turbine so you would not expect them to see much impact. There are no results for people living within a few km, or as close as 600metres from a 125metre high turbine.