How Much Difference Does A Pylon Make To House Prices?

Wednesday, 9 April 2025, 7:30 pm
Article: RNZ

Susan Edmunds, Money Correspondent

If you've been in the market for a new home for a while, you may well have come across the phenomenon.

A house looks great in the ad, is in a nice area, with the right number of bedrooms. Then you turn up and realise it has a power pylon in the garden or a cellphone tower on the street.

But while this might make some buyers think twice, does it actually affect the value of a property?

It has been reported that about 11,000 people around the country have Transpower "assets" such as pylons on their land. Another almost 20,000 have power lines running above.

(It should be noted that Te Whatu Ora says if you're standing right below a power line, the electromagnetic fields are lower than the safety limits recommended here and overseas.)

Ed McKnight, economist at property investment firm Opes Partners, said a house that was less than 250 metres from a power line could be worth up to 20 percent less than the same property not near the lines.

"The further away you are the less impact. Once you get over 250m away, there was no discernible difference."

But he said if they were blocking an otherwise nice view, that could drop a property's price by 27 percent.

As demand for electricity grows, it is possible that more pylons could be needed around the country.

Property investor Steve Goodey said he was offered properties near power pylons from time.

"One was in Lower Hutt on the rim of a hill, directly under a pylon. You'd want to get at least a 20 percent market discount but then when you go to sell, someone else is going to want a 20 percent discount, too."

He said people usually chose not to live under pylons if they had the choice, which made them less appealing for sale or as a rental property.

But Kelvin Davidson, chief economist at CoreLogic, said while a power pylon might make him less likely to offer top-dollar for a property, they did still change hands.

"So some people clearly aren't as concerned."

McKnight said cellphone towers were something a lot of people asked about.

"It turns out that lamppost cell towers and simple monopole towers make no impact. But armed monopoles can add about a 10 percent discount if you are really close to them. Part of this is likely that armed monopoles are often in industrial areas and are close to motorways. So there is more noise. This can mean that an identical house near an armed monopole can cause the value to be lower."

Vanessa Williams, spokesperson for Realestate.co.nz, said pylons and cellphone towers had a bad reputation.

"Depending on what the market is doing will depend on how big of an impact it will have on the demand in the house and ultimately the achieved price."

Property investor Graeme Fowler agreed they could have an impact, depending on how close a cellphone tower or pylon was to someone's house.

He said another issue at the moment was new two-storey state housing developments.

"Often people will sell and move when they find out - it does lower the value nearby, for sure."

Earlier, it was reported Syed Hasan, senior economics lecturer at Massey University, and colleague Iqbal Syed, researched the effect of new public housing development in the Australian Capital Territory.

They found that in a relatively more expensive suburb, a new development would lower prices by about 6 percent in the first year. In less expensive suburbs, there was no impact on property prices.

But Daniel Watt's thesis on social housing from the University of Canterbury found the introduction of social housing in Christchurch had a largely positive effect on house prices.

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