What the research says trees and landscaping add to a home's value

A credit union editor updating a curb appeal post wants to know whether landscaping or a street tree really raises what a house sells for, and by how much. Virginia Cooperative Extension (2023) notes that 15 percent is often stated as what an attractive landscape adds to a home's perceived value, and asks whether the figure is reliable. Each figure the research gives belongs to one place and one method, and the two methods, a survey of opinions about photographs and a model of recorded sale prices, do not measure the same thing.

This page reads Virginia Cooperative Extension's summary of a seven-state survey, three papers by USDA Forest Service researchers and their co-authors, one of them written with the University of Minnesota, and a University of Washington review. It adds what growers list for some yard trees and shrubs on HortOS, a free directory of American wholesale plant growers with their published availability and trade prices. It is not an appraisal and promises no return. The only values put on standing trees are the studies' own findings.

Quick facts

The 15 percent line	Virginia Cooperative Extension (United States, publication reviewed 2023) reports that 15 percent is the figure often stated for what an attractive landscape adds to a home's perceived value, and asks whether it is reliable.
The seven-state survey	In a 1999 survey in seven states, people rating photographs put a well landscaped house above the same house with lawn only by 5.5 percent in the lowest state and 11.4 percent in the highest. That is perceived value, not a sale price (Virginia Cooperative Extension summary, United States, reviewed 2023).
Design, size and plant type	In the publication's table the seven-state survey of 1999 gave design sophistication 42 percent, plant size 36 and plant type 22. The three total one hundred, so they are shares of the landscape's added value, not of the home's price (figures: Virginia Cooperative Extension summary, United States, reviewed 2023).
Portland street trees	A sale price model of home sales in east-side Portland, Oregon, from July 2006 to April 2007 found that street trees added $8,870 on average, 3.0 percent of the median sale price (USDA Forest Service, 2010).
Minnesota tree cover	A sale price model of 2005 home sales in Ramsey and Dakota Counties, Minnesota, found that 10 percentage points more tree cover within 100 meters added $1,371, or 0.48 percent, to the average sale price (USDA Forest Service and University of Minnesota, 2010).
The 3 to 15 percent range	A University of Washington review (United States, 2010) gives 3 to 15 percent for larger yard and street trees, and a trend across studies of about 7 percent. The 10 to 15 percent line of its table rests on a 2002 study of mature trees in Quebec City, Canada.

Opinion surveys and sale price models measure different things

Two methods sit behind the figures on this page. A perceived value survey shows people pictures and asks what a house seems to be worth. A sale price model, which economists call a hedonic model, estimates from recorded sales how much of each price goes with a feature such as a tree. The University of Washington review (United States, 2010) names the second method's advantage: it works from real market transactions, where a questionnaire poses a hypothetical.

Virginia Cooperative Extension (publication reviewed 2023) summarizes one such survey. In 1999, visitors to home and garden shows in seven states saw a photograph of a new suburban house with a lawn, a concrete path and nothing else. They then saw 16 more photographs of that house, each with a different mix of plant size, plant type and design. The states were Texas, Louisiana, Mississippi, Kentucky, the two Carolinas and Delaware.

Respondents ranked design first, plant size second and the mix of plant types third. The publication's table gives the three factors 42, 36 and 22, in a column headed as the percent of value added to the home. The figures total one hundred, so they divide the landscape's added value among the factors and are not shares of the home's price. A Michigan survey of the same year, using the same method, put plant size first.

From lawn only to a well landscaped house, perceived value rose by 5.5 percent in the lowest of the seven states and 11.4 percent in the highest. The same summary reports that the barest plantings, plain in design and small in plant size, took value away. Virginia Cooperative Extension (2023) concludes that large landscape spending raises perceived value and will bring a higher selling price than a minimal landscape. The survey it summarizes rated photographs, and the publication reports sale price research from Greenville, South Carolina, beside it.

How the 15 percent line compares with the studies

The gains in value that Virginia Cooperative Extension (2023) goes on to report are all below 15 percent. Beside the survey, it cites research on home sales in Greenville, South Carolina, conducted in 1996 and 1997. That study found price premiums of 4 to 5 percent for a landscape raised from average to good, and 6 to 7 percent from good to excellent. The publication adds the two steps to reach 10 to 12 percent from average to excellent.

The University of Washington review (United States, 2010) gives a wider range: larger trees in yards and along streets can add 3 to 15 percent to home values. Its table starts at 2 percent for mature yard trees. Its top line, 10 to 15 percent, is for mature trees in high-income neighborhoods, and the reference behind it is a 2002 study of Quebec City, Canada. The review puts the trend across studies at about 7 percent on price. It adds that the effect depends on how the presence of trees is defined and on the neighborhood, with larger gains in lower-quality neighborhoods. It also cautions that valuation of this kind is full of assumptions and uncertainty.

The studies side by side, with what each leaves out

The table sets out 11 United States studies of what landscaping, yard trees, street trees or tree cover add to the perceived value, sale price or rent of a single-family home. Each is reported by a source read for this page with a place, a method and a figure. For Lehigh County the summary gives a direction and no size of effect. The table is a selection and does not hold every study those sources mention. Studies from other countries are not in it, nor are studies of vacant lots, parks, open space, forest views or forest health.

Three rows rest on the papers themselves: the two Portland studies and the Minnesota study. The other eight were read through the summary named in the last column. The first column gives the period of the survey, sales or listings for the two surveys and the Portland and Minnesota rows. For the Greenville row it gives the years of the research, and for the other five rows the year the summary cites.

The summaries do not agree on the Athens, Georgia study. Both Forest Service Portland papers (2010 and 2011) report $422 for a front-yard tree, which the 2011 paper gives as 1.1 percent of the sale price. The Minnesota paper (2010) reports 3.5 to 4.5 percent more where a front yard held more than five trees, a mean of $343 a tree. The table carries the first reading.

The Portland researchers measured the diameter and height of each street tree and recorded its type. Their final sample was 2,608 houses with a median price of $259,000 (USDA Forest Service, Portland, Oregon, 2010). Only two of the tree measures tested were significant: the number of street trees, and the crown area within 100 feet of the house. At their average values the two together added $8,870 to the sale price.

The paper also follows one tree. A street tree with the sample's average canopy of 312 square feet added $7,130 to the sale price of the house behind it. It added a further $12,828, on average, spread across the neighboring houses (USDA Forest Service, Portland, Oregon, 2010). The Forest Service's own summary (Pacific Northwest Research Station, 2010) puts the share of the owner with the tree in front at only about a third of the total benefit.

In the same Portland model (USDA Forest Service, 2010), crown area on the house's own lot was not significant. Tree height mattered only when ZIP codes were left out of the model, and the authors note that tall trees stand disproportionately in some expensive neighborhoods. Street trees cut the days a house spent for sale by 1.7 on average, an effect the paper values at $88 and calls "economically irrelevant". The authors caution that carrying the result to other cities may be a problem.

The Minnesota study measured tree cover, not single trees, around 9,992 single-family homes sold in 2005 (USDA Forest Service and University of Minnesota, 2010). In one form of its model, price rose with tree cover within 100 and 250 meters up to 40 to 60 percent cover, and more cover beyond that went with a lower price. The paper found much less evidence that buyers pay more for tree cover on the home's own lot. It put no figure on a single tree, a tree size or a species. Its authors call such a model a partial estimate: it catches only the value that reaches owners of single-family homes.

What growers list for yard trees and shrubs

The two tables here answer a separate question from the studies: what growers list for trees and shrubs of the kind a yard planting uses. The plants are HortOS's own examples, chosen by no study. The first table holds 15 trees, shade and flowering kinds and one pine, each the species and not a named variety, at #15 and #30. It repeats no tree tabled in the guide to what a tree costs by container size and caliper, which has red maple, Shumard oak and eastern redbud, or in the guide to street trees and canopy. Prices are medians across growers' current trade lists on HortOS: one price per grower, ex tax, freight not included, with the number of growers pricing each size in brackets. Grower counts are the growers listing each plant on HortOS, in any size. A count here is growers listing the plant, not how many plants exist or how well it suits a site. Anyone can see the prices on HortOS, and only the trade can order.

The growers listing the plants in this table are spread across many states; the most are in Florida, Texas and North Carolina.

Some of these medians rest on few growers. The #30 median of white oak comes from 4 growers, that of black gum from 3 and that of white fringetree from 3. A median on so few growers is a thin figure, and it moves when one grower changes a price. Of the two sizes shown, flowering dogwood and sugar maple have a median at #15 only, the first from 3 growers and the second from 4, so their rows show no step in size. A median needs three growers pricing a size. The guide to nursery pot sizes explains how a container class such as #15 is defined.

The second table holds 9 shrubs, again HortOS's own examples and each the species, at #3 and #7. Its figures have the same basis as the tree table's.

Most of the growers listing the plants in this table are in Florida, North Carolina and Texas.

The #7 median of arrowwood viburnum comes from 3 growers and is thin in the same way.

What neither the studies nor the trade lists show

No study read for this page prices a nursery container class. A trade median is what growers list a container at on one date. It is not the value of a planted, established or mature tree, and it says nothing of planting, freight or what a homeowner pays.

The word size means three different things in these sources. In the survey it is the size of the plants in a photograph of a new landscape, given in Virginia Cooperative Extension's summary (2023) only as small, medium or large. In the Portland and Minnesota models it is what stood around homes already sold: tree counts, crown area and tree cover (USDA Forest Service papers, 2010). A USDA Forest Service leaflet (United States, 2004) sorts trees by their size about 40 years after planting: small-stature trees are under 25 feet tall and wide, and large-stature trees more than 40 feet. That leaflet (USDA Forest Service, United States, 2004) argues for large-stature trees on the yearly net benefits its center measured at places in the West, and accepts that a small-stature tree may be the best choice on some restricted sites.

A finding from Portland, from two Minnesota counties or from seven survey states is a finding for those places. The trade medians are national figures, not the price in any one state, and a grower's state and climate change what is listed and in what size. The hubs for Oregon, Minnesota and Texas show the growers in each state.

What to watch for

• Quoting a survey figure as a sale price. The 5.5 to 11.4 percent of the seven-state survey is a change in perceived value, taken from ratings of photographs (Virginia Cooperative Extension summary, reviewed 2023).
• Reading 42, 36 and 22 as percentages of a home's price. The three total one hundred, so they split the landscape's added value among design, plant size and plant type (figures: Virginia Cooperative Extension summary, reviewed 2023).
• Assuming more trees always add more. In the Minnesota model price fell once nearby tree cover passed 40 to 60 percent (USDA Forest Service and University of Minnesota, 2010). In a Lehigh County, Pennsylvania study, trees overhanging the house lowered the price (as summarized by the USDA Forest Service, 2010).
• Setting a trade median against a study's figure. One is what growers list a container at. The other is an estimate for trees standing around homes that sold.

Getting it right

1. Beside any figure, name the study's institution, place and method, and the year of its sales or survey. Link the paper or the institution's summary.
2. Give a range with both ends, and say what the top end rests on.
3. What one house is worth is settled by its sale, and an estimate beforehand is an appraiser's to make. Ask the appraiser which recent local sales were compared and how trees and landscaping were treated.
4. For what to plant on one site, ask the local extension office or a certified arborist what mature size fits the space. Texas A&M AgriLife Extension (Travis County, Texas, read 2026) says to choose a tree to fit the soil, the climate and the space, and notes that large shrubs set under windows end up being cut back hard.
5. For trade prices, a landscape contractor or other trade buyer asks each grower for a quote by species, container class and quantity. The grower sets the price and the terms.

A word of caution

The findings on this page are those of the studies named, each for its own place, period and method. They are given here as reported by the University of Washington, the University of Minnesota, Virginia Cooperative Extension and the USDA Forest Service with its co-authors. None is a forecast for another house. What one property is worth is for an appraiser to say, and what to plant on one site is for the local extension office or an arborist.

Sources

• Virginia Cooperative Extension, The Effect of Landscape Plants on Perceived Home Value: the seven-state survey summary.
• USDA Forest Service, Trees in the city: Valuing street trees in Portland, Oregon (2010): street trees and sale prices.
• USDA Forest Service, Science Findings issue 126: the Station's summary of the study.
• University of Washington, Green Cities: Good Health, Local Economics: review of tree value studies.
• USDA Forest Service and University of Minnesota, The value of urban tree cover (2010): Minnesota tree cover and sale prices.
• USDA Forest Service, The effect of urban trees on the rental price of single-family homes in Portland, Oregon (2011): trees and house rents.
• USDA Forest Service, The Large Tree Argument (2004): tree stature classes at maturity.
• Texas A&M AgriLife Extension Service, Travis County, Trees and Tree Care: choosing tree and shrub size.