North Shore residents apparently shouldn’t be concerned about property values if a cell phone tower goes up next door,  according to a new study conducted by an Auckland University property lecturer.

Last year a North Shore family came home from a trip to Australia to find a cellphone tower outside their Torbay property.

Richard Andrews wrote a letter to cellphone company 2degrees and the North Shore City Council when they were informed of the proposal to put in a tower four metres from their property in 2007.

The council decided not to advise residents because the phone tower’s cabinet was only 9cm higher than the national environmental regulations that were enforced by the Environmental Ministry in October 2008.

But Olga Filippova, who focused her study on 3126 homes sold across four Auckland regions – Manukau, Auckland City, Waitakere and the North Shore, believes such towers will not affect land prices.

The study took place between January 2005 and December 2007, and compared their Quotable Value NZ sale prices to their proximity to 46 cell phone towers.

All the 3126 homes were all located within 500 metres of cell phone towers, with the study divided into 50m increments.

“Sales that were close to the towers had no significant price impact,” Filippova said.

Filippova said she was surprised by the results of the study, as she had been expecting to find that proximity to cell phone towers would affect the value of homes.

“I was surprised given that past research found that there was a negative impact [on values],” she said.

Filippova presented her findings at last month’s Pacific Rim Real Estate Conference.

Her findings will be peer reviewed within the next two months, she said, and will then be submitted to an international property journal.

She said homeowners with houses located near cell phone towers may get some relief from her findings.

“There are different concerns that are associated with cell phone towers,” she said. “Of course there is health risk and visual impact.”

Manukau City Councillor Sharon Stewart, who has been fighting the construction of cell towers in residential areas for 12 years, was surprised to learn of the results of Filippova’s study.

“Real Estate agents are telling us that it’s very hard to get anyone to hop out of the car and have a look at a house that’s got a cell phone tower in front of it,” she said.

Greg Roy, a real estate agent and director of Total Focus Property, said 40 per cent of would-be house buyers were put off by homes being located close to cell phone towers.

“I would say that you would be looking at a 10 to 30 per cent drop in value [if a home is located near a tower],” he said.

Roy said two recent deals his company dealt with had “fallen over” because of the potential for cell phone towers to be built in front of the homes.

“They are not on the market anymore,” he said. “They’ve been taken off.”

By Christopher Adams NZ Herald

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