New Parking lot/bad lighting effect on value?

[skillern]

Are there specific valuation factors applied for proximity of parking areas and lighting to a home?

A new parking area and access road have been added within about 100' of our house, while the prior overflow lot had been 240' away (all up a 10% grade hill from us). The new 15 spaces closest to us will be used primarily during business hours by office staff, with only occasional evening use but is lit all night long with it's access road. This is particularly glaring for us, being down slope and in a deliberately dark neighborhood that has no street lights installed, the lighting is more than three times brighter than IES maximum and the spill onto our neighbors lot is 10 times what is allowed by IES standards.

Our house is on a dead end adjacent to an historic park-like campus (designed by a Fredrick Law Olmstead protoge, adjacent to an Olmstead park itself). I know there are positives and negatives to being at the end of a dead end in terms of valuing a home, but having seen this green space as a huge positive, we didn't contest a recent reassessment shifting us up dramatically per sq foot compared to our neighbors. This new lot and the lighting in particular have us reconsidering. I have read that the latest analysis of data shows this badly over done all night lighting actually will increase crime risk and correlates directly to lower property values but I can't find any percentages applied to home valuation. At a minimum we feel justified in contesting the percentage assessment above the average of comps on our street (9% above average per square ft), but the new proximity to this parking and especially the night-time glare seem to call for a a more significant reduction.

The 19 comps, are in generally excellent condition so the proximity to the green space is the only justification we could swallow for the disparity in our assessment. Now we feel as though there might as well be a Walmart next door at night as Walmart wouldn't, be so outrageously over lit.

Thanks for any help/advice. If there are ranges of factors that might be shared, it would be nice to separate the factors for parking lot and lighting as potentially the lighting could be scaled back although it seems less likely.

 

[Calvin the Airedale]

I have read that the latest analysis of data shows this badly over done all night lighting actually will increase crime risk and correlates directly to lower property values but I can't find any percentages applied to home valuation.

Where, pray tell, did you read this?

If your home suffers value loss due to external influences, it might more likely be the adjoining proximity of commercial parking and not the lighting.

Why? Because buyers generally don't shop for housing in the dead of night, and sellers generally don't disclose such nuisances.

PS. A study suggesting crime increases because of overlit lighting is not the same as crime actually increasing. Has crime increased since this lighting was installed?

 

[Tony V]

Skillern,

I am guessing that you are in the portion of the State that is home to the Bills and Sabers...As I am out on the Isle of Long I have seen these all night long light issues play out on the local level...seems that you have information from Data sourses to show the Town/county that the lights will cause a negitive affect on your property. You may have to further investigate other areas within the Town where this issue has already played out and attempt to find a correlation in sale prices before the lighting was installed and after.

The other thing that you can do is meet with the town about maybe having these lights turned off at a certian time (which may or may not be better)

Good Luck

 

[Walter Kirk]

Your situation is far too detailed and site specific to be answered properly on this forum. I would suggest contacting a local appraiser with experience in external influences on value.

Does the brighter than normal lighting violate any local codes or ordinances, if so it is a temporary condition which would further complicate any analysis.

 

[Restrain]

Check with a real estate agent who has sold homes next to churches or adjacent to lighted commercial properties. This should help you make your case.

 

[Lobo Fan]

I used to sell site lighting and light trespass could or should be a code violation. Generally parking lots are lit to 5 footcandles maintained to avoid lawsuits. The standard under a regular street light is one half footcandle. They make fixtures with various lighting patterns and other devoices to keep the light from gping backwards onto neighboring properties. You could certainly sue the property owners or oppose their building permit.

New Mexico has a half-assed dark sky ordinance. I got directlly involved in a grocery store/Walgreens development in an existing neighborhood. It was resolved by light sheilds and forward throw fixtures.

Gas stations also believe in highly lit facilities. They have studies the show big increases in business with overlit facilities.

 

[skillern]

Thanks for the quick replies, unfortunately we don't have adequate ordinances, although approvals for the site lighting were for 'low level' and 'no spill' lighting so I am hopeful of some changes being made.
The access road has 6 tower mounted lights spilling light directly onto my neighbors lots all night long. In the relative darkness, this unjustifiable lighting is so overdone it is sickening. I have been made aware that the need for lighting is subjective, but the science regarding human vision requirements has dramatically moved the IESNA guidelines in recent years from the old minimum fc average requirements to maximum average fc requirements that are dramatically lower. The lack of curfew lighting is an additional gripe, but lighting of an access road, with little or no anticipated nighttime traffic adjacent to a deliberately dark neighborhood with no street lights at all is wrong on so many levels.
Studies and articles posted on these sites:
http://www.darksky.org/
http://www.selene-ny.org/
Provide basis for the claims of property values and crime risk. I apologize for not posting specific links, but will try and do so if anyone is interested and can't find them there.

The point about the parking lot vs lighting is clear, but it is really the lighting that is killing me. The campus parking area, hidden by berm and slope, should logically see minimal traffic as the curvy access drive with a long steep slope must be navigated after passing through the existing parking area which is easily as closer to the office space. As a neighbor put it, the handful of workers who would actually have a shorter walk to their desks would have to be pretty lazy to drive that much to save maybe a half flight of stairs or 30 feet of walking distance, but we shall see.

Thanks again.

 

[Dan Umstead]

If at first you don't succeed, cheat. Have you thought about getting a new pellet rifle. After a while, they will probably stop replacing the bulbs.

 

[Lobo Fan]

What kind of fixtures are they using? How tall are the poles? A good example would be a car lot especially a new car dealership. Those are lighting salesmen;s dreams. They use a lot of short poles with big fixtures to get a very high footcandles.

Businesses regularly get sued for not having properly lit parking lots. If they used high mast style lighting there is not much that can be done to retrofit the fixtures. If they used shoebox style there are glare shields and other devices that can adjust the lighting patterns.

 

[skillern]

Soapbox moment: please check out the links above for info on Dark Sky issues, and thanks again for the answers.
There are a lot of misconceptions about lighting. The latest science has moved the IES lighting standards dramatically in recent years. The 'light to 5 foot candles' guidelines are out dated as even aging impaired eyeballs see well in low light, but actually take longer to recover from overlighting and bright spots create dark areas the eye can't adjust quickly to them. The latest IESNA standards, call for maximum, (not to be exceeded averages) of 0.8 fc for commercial and 0.5 fc for residential parking. They specify a maximum ratio of brightest to darkest areas under the 20 to 1 range our eyes can function properly in. In the case of our neighboring campus, the lot is lit to a 1.6 fc average (according to photometric supplied) at 70% of initial brightness allowing for the bulbs to darken and the optics to get dirty with incomplete and only internal shielding allowing tons of spill and glare down a highly visible hillside. When you walk in the lot, you feel like you could play tennis it's so bright (~2.3fc average as they are new), yet the surrounding area is so dark it's like you are on a stage in a spot light and seeing beyond the bubble of light is impossible.

Dark sky lighting doesn't cost much more if any to manufacture, proper lighting would easily pay for it's installation in many cases but simply getting past the more is better attitude towards lighting will help us all see at night. I've walked my neighborhood for years at night, no streetlights is no issue, but when the glare bombs are turned on, all bets are off.

Thanks