Document Type

Thesis

Publication Date

2021

Advisor

Samrat Kunwar

Abstract

Minnesota is known as a land of plentiful lakes, most of which provide a high economic value to the communities that surround them. This motivated us to question whether rivers play the same role to surrounding real estate. We obtained special data, housing, and neighborhood characteristics from the Minnesota Geospatial Commons for our sample of 4125 single family homes. We collected crime rate data from a neighborhood evaluation website, educational data from the Minnesota Department of Education and water quality data from the MPCA. Distance to the river was calculated with ArcMAP GIS software. A buffer was also used to group properties based on water quality monitoring stations. The data was summarized and then three separate regressions were run. The first regression, the basic model, looked at the relationship between sale value, distance to the river, whether a property was adjacent to the river and dissolved oxygen. The secondary model included those variables along with more housing characteristics and the full regression included all our experimental variables. Distance to river was significant through all three models and was shown to have a positive effect on house price when comparing the first buffer distance to the second. This study shows support for the economic value of riverside development, as results showed that property adjacent to the river is valued 32.2% higher on the market. As there is much undeveloped riverside property in Anoka County we advocate for sustainable development and redevelopment.

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