🎙️🏠 Does Living Near Costco Boost Your Home Value? PLUS 7 Seller Mistakes That Can Cost You BIG! 💰🛒

Well, hello again, Northern California.

Welcome to the Radio Realtors, the show that gives you the information you need to make smarter decisions when buying, selling, and owning real estate.

I'm Robert Lewis with Made for More Realty, powered by EXP Realty, your real estate professor.

And as always, if you're thinking about buying or selling a home, or you simply want to know what your home could sell for, In today's market, call me right now at 916-751-1388.

That's 916-751-1388.

Or you can visit me online at RadioRealtors.com. And I have a fun show for you today.

During the second half of the show, I'm going to talk to you... sellers about the seven ways to become your realtor's most difficult client and how that costs you money.

But before that, we're going to talk about Costco and stick with me because by the end of today's show, I think you might look at Costco and your neighborhood a little differently.

So here's my question.

Does living near a Costco make your home more valuable? Well, believe it or not, somebody actually studied this.

Silas Kwok at the Vancouver School of Economics looked at Costco openings across the United States from 2002 through 2020 and examined what happened to nearby property values.

And the first finding is important.

Across the country overall, Costco openings cause no significant change in property values on average.

So let's get that out of the way.

I'm not telling you Costco opens three miles from your house and suddenly your home goes up $50,000.

That's not what the research found, but here's where it gets interesting.

In counties with above average population density, the research found property values within five miles of a Costco increased 7.9%.

And in counties with above average household income, values within five miles increased 5.2%.

Those increases were measured two and a half years after Costco opened.

Now, does that prove Costco itself caused those increases? No.

Real estate doesn't work that way.

Home values are influenced by interest rates, employment, housing inventory, schools, transportation, neighborhood desirability, and dozens of other factors.

And there's maybe another way to look at this research that I think is even more interesting.

Maybe Costco doesn't necessarily create growth.

Maybe Costco helps confirm where growth is already happening.