Does air pollution impact real estate values? Should it?
Many times people have told Breathe Clean Air “I never would have moved here if I’d known” [about the wood smoke pollution].
And we know a number of stories of people moving away or to different areas of the Valley — at a great financial and often emotional cost — because of wood smoke pollution.
Imagine if home buyers had access to air quality info before they bought? An initiative in London is working on that.
From the Guardian newspaper:
A citizen-funded advertising campaign against air pollution will target the property market with billboard slogans including “Location, location, lung disease” and “The neighbourhood’s gone to the docs”.
These will be accompanied by online ads and a website where homebuyers and renters in London will be able to look up levels of toxic air for the property they are considering. The campaign will launch in the capital in late May and there are plans to make it nationwide.
Read more about this campaign in the Guardian article “‘Location, location, lung disease’: pollution ads target property market“
That sort of thing should be done everywhere. For example, here in Canada the MLS service should have an “air-quality rating” on all properties for sale or rent that is based upon historical records, weather patterns, whether or not any nearby properties have wood furnaces, local burning regulations, and so on. That would allow prospective buyers to be fully informed regarding the quality of the air they would be breathing were they to buy a specific property.