Seismic Retrofit Added 17% to the Resale Value of Older California Houses
Publication: Natural Hazards Review
Volume 23, Issue 4
Abstract
We examined the resale prices of 217 recently sold California single-family dwellings built before 1960 to determine whether buyers value seismic retrofit. Of these, sellers indicated that 29 houses had been seismically retrofitted: 17 pre-1940 houses (when unanchored foundations and unbraced cripple walls were common) and 12 built between 1940 and 1959 (when unbraced cripple walls were common). A stepwise regression analysis indicates that in 2020 California home buyers paid 17% more for retrofitted pre-1940 houses. Buyers may have paid about 1% more for retrofitted 1940–1959 houses, but the correlation is weak. A higher resale price is a powerful incentive for people to invest in foundation bolts and cripple wall bracing. It reinforces findings by other researchers that natural hazard mitigation not only saves (by avoiding future losses), but it also pays (through higher resale value).
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Data Availability Statement
The Zillow data that support the findings of this study are available from the corresponding author upon reasonable request.
Acknowledgments
Some funding for this work was provided by the Institute for Catastrophic Loss Reduction. We thank Althea Cohen-Porter of Columbia University and Nicholas Grant of University of Colorado Boulder, who helped to compile the data used here. Thanks also to Charlie Scawthorn for his critique of our early findings. And thanks to Kevin Simmons, Sebastain Awondo, and Lars Powell for insight on their prior work and for their advice comparing and contrasting this work with theirs.
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Information & Authors
Information
Published In
Natural Hazards Review
Volume 23 • Issue 4 • November 2022
Copyright
© 2022 American Society of Civil Engineers.
History
Received: Oct 25, 2021
Accepted: May 24, 2022
Published online: Aug 26, 2022
Published in print: Nov 1, 2022
Discussion open until: Jan 26, 2023
ASCE Technical Topics:
- Analysis (by type)
- Buildings
- Business management
- Construction engineering
- Construction methods
- Contracts and subcontracts
- Earthquake engineering
- Engineering fundamentals
- Foundations
- Geotechnical engineering
- Practice and Profession
- Pricing
- Regression analysis
- Rehabilitation
- Residential buildings
- Seismic effects
- Seismic tests
- Statistical analysis (by type)
- Structural engineering
- Structural members
- Structural systems
- Structures (by type)
- Tests (by type)
- Walls
Authors
Metrics & Citations
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