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I live in a growing city where they're THINKING about building a shopping center about 4.5 miles from my home, including a high class casino and resort. If this thing does pass, it would take approx. 10 years for it to be fully built. (the city hasn't even voted on it yet. 3 years for the voting process and 7 years for construction)
Currently in the area, there's notihng except for square miles of just empty fields, so some construction would be ideal. My question to the people on this board is that do you think my home value will decline due to a casino being built in the near future? If so, how soon should i sell? If it does pass, I was thinking of selling halfway during the construction process.
I have spoken with a friend of mine and he said his studies have not shown a positive nor a negative affect on home prices and casinos, but I have no idea. Any feed back would be great!
4.5 miles away is not exactly close. The exception might be if your property is directly on the main road to the casino and shopping center and traffic increased significantly. That might have some negative impact on value.
A little town about 50 miles from me gained a casino after a local billionaire restored 2 historic hotels in the area. About 1000 jobs were added to a very poor county. In the decade or so since it opened values have improved.
Lots can happen in 10 years. I wouldn't worry about it.
This is one of those situations that REALLY has a HUGE range of possibilities and the timeline is so long that the OP can make smart decisions instead of getting sucked into "spin machine" if they watch a few things carefully.
First, since this is an area that does not sound like ANYTHING has to be torn down or involved in the often messy eminent domain process it probably won't have too much opposition. That is mostly a good thing as when projects do end up with court battles the end result is much more likely to run into problems.
Secondly this sounds like part of a "build out" more than a "redevelopment". Again that is MOSTLY a good thing as towns are often too quick to "give away the farm" when they have some hulking eyesores that they want torn down. That sort of give away means UNDERFUNDED developers often get involved and then they go broke and the project stalls out until somebody comes in with even more government support to try to get things rolling. In contrast if the current idea is to get NORMAL type developers involved who'll use their own money that is GOOD THING as they probably will try to line up tenants for the shopping center. Those tenants, whether they are grocery stores or discount retailers or chain restaurants ALL have their own internal criteria for getting involved with these sorts of projects. If they determine that there are enough people already in the area to support opening their locations that is a "second check" on the idea that the project can be successful as opposed to some "pie in the sky" dreamers that is willing to finance this whole thing on government debt.
The smart things to do include attending ALL THE PUBLIC MEETING YOU CAN! Whenever there are presentations about the design, potential profit or especially ANY governmental financing you should be taking notes. Check out all the "promises" made by the developers as well as the local politicians. Compare the kinds of things that are said to what was said about very similar projects that have been attempted in DOZENS of other settings. From "Indian Casinos" to "riverboats" to all kinds of "resorts" there are some of these projects that DO help the local community. Often the factors are related to what sorts of other options there are for folks to spend their "entertainment dollars" -- if it is already easy to drive to another spot to spin slot machines that tends to dampen the potential of these things to make anything close to projections. If there are "grand plans" to make your town into some kind of Mecca for "conventions, family get aways, and luxury weekends for couples" you can pretty much assume these will FLOP. The smarter towns often ask and get things from the developers that do make things NICER for residents -- adding or improving SPORTS FACILITIES for local kids tends to be a winner, so to can it be a PLUS for the developer to focus less on the actual GAMING and more on the leveraging any ties to existing entertainment and vacation type activities -- if there used to be a good deal of fishing and recreational boating and that declined when a local marina folded then it might make sense for a waterfront casino to invest in redeveloping that, similarly if there are other OUTDOOR activities that were once popular but have declined the casino might be able to re-invest in things like RV parks, nature area restoration and education... Even Nevada is using revenue from gaming to help underwrite things like the Tesla expansion. Wages for MAKING THINGS are often much better than wages for service industries jobs in hotels and restaurants...
If the town takes on TOO MUCH DEBT that is a terrible sign -- it very likely will result in other city services SUFFERING. Not to get too dramatic but the problems in areas like Flint MI of neglecting the town water supply are often the HORRIBLE result of believing in decades ago promises to "re-invent" the town by developers who depend on the financing of the town for goofy convention centers and such...
If the town goes down that path a smart homeowner should be able to "get out" before there is a mass disaster / exodus -- especially if your home is not too close to the actual casino site you can market it like any one else who decides to leave for a new job or family reasons. If you wait around to see the "train wreck" of town that can't cover its obligations to police, fire, water / sanitation, there may be TOO MANY other houses for sale and many folks who get foreclosed...
The fact that there is also SOME potential upside probably NOT AS IMPORTANT as determining where YOU would go next and what sorts of housing costs / job opportunities there are elsewhere. If you have no family obligations you could move anywhere and then the question becomes where will your skills be best compensated AND how does the compensation for those skills compare to LIVING COSTS to where you might move. While a three year timeline seems LONG for "the voting process" if you are serious about considering all your options for relocation that time will FLY by. If you do decide that there is not going to be a negative impact at least you will know where you stand with regard to other places to live.
The handful of places that have markedly improved when there was a casino built /opened almost ALWAYS trace the success to more than just that event -- there has to be something "pushing" folks away from even more economically bleak areas and also a sense that the total quality of life is improving. Even in places that are very dependent on casinos like Las Vegas the mix of folks who are RETIRED and drawing pensions from someplace else vs the folks in town because of some business related travel makes the whole economy rather fragile. The relative stability of employment for even rather high level employees of the larger gaming companies is POOR and when there are downturns there are not many good alternatives.
Economists often have a negative view of the potential for any casino to do other than take advantage of the naive and concentrate profits in the hands of tiny group of folks who truly produce no lasting positive effects. The best case scenario is that that whatever tax revenues are generated help minimize the debt of the locality which can then attract a more diverse range of firms that have a wider positive effect on the area.
Last edited by chet everett; 04-27-2017 at 12:00 PM..
Location: East of Seattle since 1992, 615' Elevation, Zone 8b - originally from SF Bay Area
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There are a lot of minimum/low wage employees at a casino and more so at a resort. Unless there are some cheap apartments in the area, I would expect the demand to increase dramatically for new units to be built, in fact it may be required by the city. Those would do more to decrease your property values than the casino itself. We have an example of this nearby city of Snoqualmie, WA. The big residential development started in the late 1990s, and is in phase II, expected to be built out by about 2018. The Casino came in late 2008, less than a mile away, and has not affected the home values, which have increased but remain reasonable for our area due to being so far out (45 miles) from major centers. The tribe owning the casino and others have proposed big hotels, however controversy over them with the local residents and government have held up the process, and this casino is limited to fairly local customers. Average increase for single family homes in this development is 25% from 2010-2016, lower than the Seattle/Eastside areas which are closer to 50% in that time, but still good.
Definitely sell if your hobby is astronomy, 'cause you're going to get bright lights like you can't imagine.
Seriously- casinos seem to be overbuilt in almost the entire country. Considerably reducing the chances that any new one will actually get built. I would be more concerned about the blight when the casino fails than the impact of development if it succeeds.
I'm in West Roseville about six miles from Thunder Valley and about the same from the Galleria and The Fountains (high-end regional shopping centers) and I've never heard anything about the casino or the shopping centers affecting property values negatively. In fact, if anything, they are all touted as benefits to living in this area. For that matter, Thunder Valley advertises in Architectural Digest so they are trying to attract that level of clientele. Their marketing plan has been to capture Bay Area casino-goers rather than having them go to Reno or Tahoe (for those of you not in this area, it's near I-80 which goes between the Bay Area and Reno/Tahoe). It's out in the middle of an area similar to where the casino you're talking about would be. Perhaps the one potentially close to you will have a similar vision and give your area a positive boost. In Thunder Valley's case, the surrounding fields will eventually be home to the University of Warwick, a branch of Cal State Sacramento and technology centers, according to the master plan for my city and county.
I wonder if you posted this in the Sacramento forum if you'd get feedback that might be specifically relevant to your personal situation. Or maybe you have and I just missed it. I haven't followed the progression of the one near you very closely - just snippets that I've seen on the local news or in the Sunday paper.
Last edited by movinon; 04-27-2017 at 01:39 PM..
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