Living with the impact of windmills  

Author:  Luxemburger, Chris

• An overview of how it impacts on aviation safety
• An overview of how land values are established
• An overview of the impact of windmills on land values

Land Values Argument

Land value can be expressed in many different ways:

- Reconstruction Value
- Appraised Value
- Liquidity Value
- Market Value
- etc.

When dealing with the OMB hearing I focused on market value since it is defined as the highest price in terms of money, that the property will bring to a willing seller if exposed for sale on the open market; allowing a reasonable time to find a willing buyer, buying with the knowledge of all the uses to which it is adapted and for which it can be legally used, and with neither buyer or seller acting under necessity, compulsion, nor peculiar and special circumstances.

There has never been a comprehensive study that looks at land values and the effect of windmills so there were no criteria to follow. As such I developed the following criteria:
• based on appraisal principals, visible structures have an impact on the value of land
• therefore, divide land where windmills are visible vs not.

Properties inside Windmill Zones – Properties within 3nm of a windmill. 3nm was used as a basis since that is the distance one can see is a straight line due to the earth’s curvature when on the same horizontal spectrum of the objects in the distance. Pilots use this as a basis for determining weather minima for the similar reason.

Properties outside Windmill Zones – These are properties a minimum of 3nm from existing windmills. If the object is not readily visible is the same horizontal plane, one can assume that there would be no impact in perceived value of the property due to the windmills.

When this was done (based on a sample of 600 properties that sold in the windmill areas over a period of 3 years) the following was discovered:

• The days on market was more than double for those properties inside the windmill zones
• The sold price was on average $48,000 lower inside the windmill zones than those outside
• The number of homes not absorbed (not sold) was 11% vs 3%

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