Plus, a peek into Zillow listings that mention native landscaping
Dear Avant Gardener, I'm interested in native landscaping from a purely values-driven motivation, but I'm also in the process of both selling and buying a home and curious: Are there any stats around the economic value or curb appeal of biodiverse/native landscaping? Does it add to home values? Detract? Neutral? And does the design element matter in this? — Lauren, Bay Area, CA
How responsible! Seriously, that’s a good thing. As a serial renovator who sells too fast — we’re talking 15 projects in as many years — my own focus on ROI (return on investment) has saved me from economic disaster. The good news is that values-driven landscaping can have a positive — or even phenomenal — ROI. And, yes, design matters, second only to plant size. On the other hand, plant choice, including native status, contributes little to ROI.
Excellence matters
Improving your home’s landscape from average to excellent yields an increase in home value of 10-12%, according to robust studies using actual home sales. The impact of better landscaping rises as lot size increases from under a quarter acre to over an acre, according to a Clemson study. And improving from good to excellent earns a better return than greater than from average to good.
The home price premium attributable to upgrading landscaping quality from good to excellent is 6% to 7% while from average to good, it is about 4% to 5%. — Journal of Environmental Horticulture (1999)
In the Bay Area, where the average price of a hone on Zillow is $1.1 million, that means improving your landscaping from average to excellent can add more than $110,000 to its sale price. Note, however, that excellence is a high bar; in the Clemson study, landscape and real estate pros rated only 15% of landscapes excellent, while 42% were good or better.
Size — and design — matters
So, what makes an excellent landscape? Plant size accounts for roughly half the added value of excellent landscaping, across multiple studies and many regions. Design sophistication is almost as important. And plant material – i.e., type and variety of plants – is least important.
Holding other factors equal, increasing from the smallest size plant generally available for installation to the largest size defined in our study increased perceived home value by 5.0%. Design sophistication was almost as important as size. Holding other factors equal, upgrading from a traditional foundation planting to a sophisticated design that incorporated multiple bed and curved bedlines increased perceived home value by 4.5%. The type of plant material used was the least important. — Journal of Environmental Horticulture (2000)
Design preferences
So, what do people think looks good? Some lawn. Tree coverage — especially in the South. And yards that look easy to take care of, especially in the North, possibly because people have fewer months in which to enjoy their labors — or labor they pay for, according to a study in Urban Ecosystems.
This study just scratched the surface with respect to regional — or even more local — landscaping preferences. In the Bay Area, for example, 10% of current listings mention “drought tolerant.” In dry Scottsdale, AZ, none of the home listings say “drought tolerant” — hell, it’s dry all the time — but 17% mention “desert landscaping.”
Style, not type of plant, matters
Stylistic preferences vary even from neighborhood to neighborhood within a city. In the Phoenix area, some HOAs still require traditional lawns (though the city now prohibits requiring overseeding), while others — including the awesome Desert Mountain pictured above — require native plants. Bucking either stylistic trend would likely hurt the price of a home in those areas, while also inviting reprimand from the HOA.
Results showed that respondents preferred residential landscapes that were maintained and aligned with cultural norms. For instance, turfgrass lawns were preferred if neighbors had turfgrass while native prairie gardens were preferred if the neighbors had the same. — Land Use Policy (2020)
Local preferences don’t impede planting natives for biodiversity. You can create any style of garden with native plants. Small design tweaks make a no-mow, all-native yard fit into most neighborhood norms. On the other hand, planting native is no excuse for poor design — and the latter will certainly hurt the value of your home. Native yards can indeed look unkempt without adequate structure.
Cost vs. return
How smart your landscaping investment is depends as much on how much you spend as on how much it adds to your house value: The less you spend to achieve landscaping excellence, the better your ROI. If your landscape is currently not native but excellent within your community’s norms, do nothing.
Landscape architects, because of their training, focus mostly on hardscaping, which is expensive. (How can you tell where a landscape architect has worked? Because you can skateboard there.) But plant size and arrangement drives value, so I recommend investing in plants and planting design, not hardscaping, if you do any landscaping before selling your house.
“Softscaping” — i.e., plants — costs about $9 to $12 per square foot. The average Bay Area lot of 8,300 square feet probably has less than 6,000 plantable square feet. Leaving 30% for turf (or gravel or whatever you currently have), hiring a landscaper to plant the remaining 4,000 square feet would cost roughly $40,000. ROI equals net gain divided by investment. Your net gain would be $110,000 - $40,000 = $70,000, so your ROI would be $70,000/$40,000 = 175%. Fabulous! DIY costs about half as much, giving you a net gain of $90,000 on an investment of $20,000 for an ROI of 450%. Woohoo!
However, if you’re really selling soon, I think you can do even better. Research confirms that “curb appeal” is a thing, adding 7% to home value. If your current landscape is just average, focus your plantings on the front yard, paint the front door, and maybe update the house number and entry light.
We recover the value of curb appeal in residential housing by using photos obtained from Google Street View, a deep learning classification algorithm and a variety of hedonic controls. … Together, neighbor and own property curb appeal together may account for up to 7% of a house’s sale price. The curb appeal premium is more pronounced during times of housing market weakness and greater in neighborhoods with high average curb appeal. — The Journal of Real Estate Finance and Economics
Make sure to invest in larger plants, installed close together so they look densely planted — and don’t need weeding — when you list your house. If you spend $10,000 to plant a 1,000 square foot front yard, the ROI from improved curb appeal will be 670% — or 1440% for DIY. Now we’re talking!
Finally, about that next home
When you’re looking for your next house, keep in mind how much the landscaping is adding to the cost of the home and don’t pay a premium for established exotic plantings you will replace with natives. You’ll be adding more value by transforming a neglected, underplanted yard.
If you live in your new house for many years, your native plants will save you in terms of annual maintenance, too. Traditional turf grass is misperceived as low maintenance; in fact, it’s the least expensive type of softscaping to install but the most expensive to maintain. Native trees, shrubs, and perennials don't require mowing, fertilizing, pesticides, soil amendments, mulch applications, or watering (once established).
Of course, if you plan to stay in your home for many years, you can do whatever you like and amortize the expense over your stay, which is how I justify my automobile-orange Bertazzoni induction range. I’ve promised Pete we won’t move for a long time.
— The Avant Gardener
Why, How, Wow!
Why?
Balance is key to design, so more of a good thing is not always better. In Lubbock, Texas, tree coverage accounted for 30% of home price increases from landscape improvements. Forty percent tree coverage was optimal, and more or less detracted from home value.
While the optimal amount of tree coverage will vary by region — and may increase with concerns about global warming — having a mix of shady and sunny areas is probably valued nationwide. In the Bay Area, “mature trees” are important enough to be mentioned in 40% of current listings on Zillow.
How
I recommend deferring to your realtor regarding your property description. ”Lush” and “mature trees” are selling points in the Bay Area. On the other hand, “habitat” and “native” are so unusual as to be fringe — like koi ponds (4% of listings). However, unlike koi ponds, which scream “high maintenance,” native plants are just plants to most people.
Wow!
Few listings in California — or elsewhere — mention native plants, even when they dominate the landscape. Desert Mountain, AZ, requires native-only yards and the results are gorgeous, yet none of the community’s listings mention natives. However, biodiverse yards can be a selling point at various price levels throughout California. The current listings below include related terms in the property descriptions.
