Tracking the Perceptions, Boundaries of Property Value

The concept of 'Not in My Back Yard', or NIMBY, has become so deeply embedded in American homeowners that it now extends beyond one's property line.

“As people are increasingly living in urban areas really close to each other, it starts to be the case that so much of the value of your property is bound up in things that are happening outside of your parcel,” said Lee Fennell, a law professor at the University of Chicago who has written about what she calls the “unbounded” nature of our homes -- in denser living areas, access to jobs, ease of transportation, and proximity to amenities affects the value of your parcel, The New York Times explains. 

As urbanization brought blacks and whites closer together, white communities reacted with racially restrictive covenants, aiming to keep blacks and their perceived threat to property values out of white neighborhoods. “One of them was to make white people think that the value of their homes depended on living in a segregated community,” said Carol Rose, a law professor at Yale. “That outlived racially restrictive covenants.”

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