How do you estimate the value of community?

In the United States, we know how to appraise houses.  We can figure out what they are worth based on their physical characterisics: so many square feet, so many bathrooms, so many bedrooms.   The value of individual assets is easy for Americans to figure out and understand.  In every home magazine on the shelf, you see countless fabulous homes with meticulous decorating.  What you don’t see-pretty much ever–is the neighborhood the home is in.  The reason?  Most neighborhoods aren’t anything special because they were built the cheapest/fastest/easiest way possible.  Individual houses are fabulous because their owners care about them, and pour love, money, and attention into them.  This almost never happens on a public scale. The focus in U.S. real estate market is on the individual home, not the wider public sphere in which it exists.  That’s why real estate porn–the shelter mags–sell so well.

I recently read a great book “It’s a Sprawl World After All” by Douglas E. Morris which is primarily about the human social costs of sprawl.  There’s a section that talks about the often unrecognized burden of being around strangers all day long.  Because uses are so separated in sprawl, you have to visit many different places (by car of course) to get your daily needs, which means you can be around people all day who don’t know you.  We’ve created a physical landscape that makes us a nation of strangers.  Being recognized the book says, has a positive effect on our sense of well being and our sense of who we are in the world.  I couldn’t agree more.  I’ve noticed this dramatic effect in my own neighborhood.  I walk out the door to do anything and I always see and talk to many people who know me, and I know them.  It provides a sense of satisfaction and safety that pervades my life in this new urbanist neighborhood.  I firmly believe the thoughtful design of my neighborhood made this possible, there’s a real sense of place here.  (The only negative of this?  If you walk anywhere to do anything in Bradburn Village it will take 1 hour longer than you planned because you stop to chat with your neighbors).

This “sense of place” is composed of a variety of things: a design focus on people not cars, many well designed public spaces in my neighborhood where people go frequently to interact, the fact that all the homes are different so everyone has a strong sense of their space, and others–not just another beige house in a sea of sameness.   This is a priceless asset of my neighborhood, but realtors don’t know how to sell it, people who are used to seeing the same beige sprawl often don’t understand it, and thus the value of this is sometimes lost on people who don’t live here.

I bought that book in the new urbanist neighborhood of Celebration (in Florida) in a little independent bookstore owned by people who live in the community.  While I was sitting there reading, a customer walked in and purchased a book.  The owner of the store said “If you like I can just deliver it to your porch when it comes in”.  That kind of person to person connection, which is lost in sprawl for the most part, is more valuable than all the extra square feet in a standard McMansion subdivision.  

A 2,000 sq foot home with 3 bedrooms, 2.5 bathrooms in Bradburn Village: $360,000.  Knowing all your neighbors: Priceless.