Paying for Quietness: The Impact of Noise on Geneva Rents

Abstract

Using the hedonic approach, this paper analyses housing market data to infer the impact of noise on rents in Geneva, Switzerland. Using three different databases, including a geographical information system (GIS), structural, accessibility and environmental variables were obtained for a large proportion of apartments rented in Geneva. The paper is thus in line with the new generation hedonic models, which exploit the vast potential of GIS to obtain large databases including detailed characteristics of the apartments. In addition, different and original measures of noise were used in order to assess possible differences of the noise impact on rents, while existing studies typically refer to a single noise index. This paper assesses the impacts of noise related to all sources, but also to airport noise only, while existing studies usually refer to road or aircraft noise. The results can be summarised as follows. First, it is shown that the impact of all sources of noise on rents at the level of the whole canton is about 0.7 per cent per dB(A) and about 1 per cent when considering exclusively airplane noise, in the airport area. Secondly, this impact does not change fundamentally depending on the different measures of noise used in the estimations. Thirdly, the impact of noise does not depend on the institutional structure of the market-i.e. it is relatively similar in the private rental sector and in apartments directly under government control, although in the former the dynamic of noise has a greater impact. Fourthly, the results show that noise also has a higher economic impact, when the background noise level is lower. And fifthly, air pollution has a distinct impact on rents, in addition to noise.

Assessing the Impact of Urban Improvement on Housing Values: A Hedonic Pricing and Multi-Attribute Analysis Model for the Historic Centre of Venice

“…HPM has been applied to very different urban contexts: in cities such as Geneva [7][8][9] or Glasgow [10]; metropolises such as Naples [11,12], Tokyo [13], Chicago, Denver, Philadelphia, Baltimore, Washington DC [14,15], or Seoul [16]; and in informal settlements in Asian cities such as Bangkok and Jakarta [17]. Studies have either focused on one specific local context [18,19], or compared various local environments ranging over wide territorial areas to estimate the effect of the proximity to natural attractions [20][21][22], or big infrastructures such as airports [23].…”

“…The environmental characteristics that are more often evaluated and are believed to have a considerable impact on urban quality and on real estate values are related to air pollution [9,14,16,26] or noise impact [7,11,23], further to the already cited example of urban parks and green spaces [5]. Among the positive aspects evaluated, we found a perspective that had a relevant influence on housing values, in particular, views on urbanized, agricultural, or wooded areas [27], lakes [20], on open spaces offering recreational attractions, and slowing down further urbanization [28].…”

“…Many studies have used a spatial approach to the assessment of hedonic values, eliciting information on the value of accessibility and distance of real estate objects to environmental amenities [9,[29][30][31][32], and a panoramic view [9,27]. Bin et al [33] used a spatial autoregressive model to investigate the effects of flood risk on property values; in other cases, GIS has been used for deriving the location characteristics of the buildings [7,34].…”

Ecology of Sound: The Sonic Order of Urban Space

“…Nor are these effects restricted to physiological impacts. Baranzini and Ramirez (2005) have reported that the overall economic impact of urban noise on private rents in Geneva is 0.7 per cent per decibel and 1 per cent when airplace noise exclusively was modelled. These effects were more pronounced in neighbourhoods where the prevailing background noise level was low, in other words when sounds 'like airplanes' were seen to be 'out of place'.…”

The impact on rent from tenant and landlord characteristics and interaction

“…Bourassa, Hoesli, and Sun (2004) Frew and Wilson (2002) estimate the connection between location and property value. Baranzini and Ramirez (2005) ask what tenants must pay for quietness in their study of what impact noise has on Geneva rents. The reader notices that these studies employ attributes with the physical units or properties of the physical surroundings when they explain variation in price and rent.…”