Perhaps everyone in the world knows that living near a Starbucks is not a terrible idea, as far as home values go, but in a new book called Zillow Talk, Zillow's CEO Spencer Rascoff and chief economist Stan Humphries claim that residing a quarter-mile from the popular coffee chain could nearly double your property values if you wait long enough. Their data tracked market trends from the last 17 years, and found a 96% increase for homes near Starbucks versus a 65% increase for homes that are farther away. Likely shocking no one, homes near the coffee giant handily outperformed homes near Dunkin' Donuts.
"True, properties near Starbucks locations tend to start out more expensive," Rascoff and Humphries concede in Zillow Talk. "But these properties appreciate at a faster rate than US housing on the whole. Interestingly, they're also recovering much more quickly from the housing bust."
In order to figure out whether Starbucks was driving the increases, or merely setting up shop in gentrifying neighborhoods where property values were already bound to heat up, they looked at data from five years after the location first opened, then compared a database of Starbucks and Dunkin' Donuts locations with nearby home value estimates. The result? The Starbucks homes have appreciated 16% more. Of course, Starbucks dominates the West Coast and has roughly 4,000 more shops in the U.S., while Dunkin' Donuts is ubiquitous on the East Coast.
According to the authors, "Starbucks seems to be fueling—not following—these higher home values."
· Living Near a Starbucks Might Double Your Home's Value [Grub Street]
· Confirmed: Starbucks knows the next hot neighborhood before everybody else does [Quartz]
· All Starbucks coverage [Curbed National]