What Makes a Locality Attractive? Estimates of the Amenity Value of Parks for Victoria

This paper provides the first estimates of the effects of parks on house prices within Victoria. We estimate hedonic regressions of house prices on the distance to six types of parks as well as a wide range of other amenities that may impact on house prices. We find that moving from the median to the first percentile of distances from a park is associated with increased property prices of up to $86,000. Parks are more likely to have a positive effect on house prices in regional Victoria than in Melbourne, where we speculate that for some types of parks, congestion or other types of negative externalities may be present. The current guidelines for cost-benefit analysis for transport projects do not include values for amenity effects. So the results of this work can be used to construct estimates of the amenity value of a park for a rapid cost benefit analysis.