TRUE OR FALSE?

"The construction of a wind farm has a negative effect on house prices in the area."

True or false?

Answer: FALSE.

In May 2003, the Renewable Energy Policy Project in the US published an 81-page report concerning property values in the neighbourhood of windfarms.

Examining every major windfarm development in the US between 1998 and 2002, the report examined some 25,000 property transactions before and after the ten major windfarms were constructed.

What the report revealed was that, in eight out of ten of the cases studied, property values within a five mile radius of a windfarm actually INCREASED faster than in the wider community. In nine out of ten of the cases studied, those property prices ROSE after the windfarms had come online.

In April 2006, the Bard Centre for Environmental Policy in New York published another survey detailing the impact of windfarm visibility on property values in Madison County, NY. The study found an 'absence of measurable effects of windfarm visibility on property transaction values.' In other words, the proximity of a windfarm had no impact on house prices.

Then came the survey that the nimbies want you to know about.

Oxford Brookes University examined 919 property transactions near three windfarms in Cornwall and found that the values of terraced houses close to the windfarms were lower than they would be further away.

But then the researchers spoke to estate agents in the area and found that the nearer terraced houses were in fact ex-Ministry of Defence properties and were considered less desirable - that is, those terraced houses were already cheaper than others, irrespective of the nearby windfarm.

Naturally, the nimbies won't tell you that the Oxford Brookes University study, published in 2007, revealed that certain properties close to Cornish windfarms were cheaper because, well, they were cheaper anyway.

No - those practised misleaders of the public, like VVASP, only want to shock you with a non-representative survey which didn't even conclude what they want you to think it did.

I bet that the nimby brigade don't want you to know that the Royal Institute of Chartered Surveyors found no detrimental impact on house prices as a result of windfarm developments.

So - all the evidence suggests that house prices are not affected by windfarms, and if anything they tend to go UP when a windfarm is nearby.

Those are the facts. Forget the nonsense spun by the nimbies. They're not giving you the full story. In fact, they're lying, as always.

What is more, local evidence indicates that people are eager to move into the Lenches BECAUSE of the proposed windfarm.

The reality is that house prices will not be adversely effected. They might even go up faster than the average. And a better class of person will move into the area.

So what's not to like?