Monday 10 June 2013

RPZ myth: the RPZ devalues your home

One of the funniest "residents parking ... " claims is that being in an RPZ devalues your house.

As noted before, the RPZ lets you buy the option to use your car on a weekday.

It's hard to say that this devalues a house.

After all, people will spend thousands of pounds putting in a driveway for having that option. That's if the council will let them -pesky "listed building" and "conservation area" rules stop you knocking down walls in the core of the city just to park a couple of vehicles.

Take, Clifton, for example. In one house they had to stick in the driveway, then apply for retrospective permission to widen the gates to fit a double push chair in, one that turns out to be smart-car shaped.



Why would anyone go to the effort of filing multiple (refused) planning requests to put in a driveway, then sneak one in -along with a dropped kerb- just to get a car in? It's because having that driveway lets you park a car near a house.

That's why having a driveway is considered so valuable that Estate Agents mention it in their listings of houses in Clifton.

An RPZ can deliver that guarantee of parking to an area -by removing weekday commuters, and by placing an upper limit on vehicle ownership per household.

Given that guaranteed parking increases the retail value of a house, it's hard to defend a claim that an RPZ will decrease the value of households.


3 comments:

The Bristol Blogger said...

Surely a parking zone will increase the price of your property? being "in the zone" will have a similar cache to having an 0207 number in London. It will mark out your property as central and fashionable.

Keep an eye on that estate agent literature once the zones are in place ...

Bristol Traffic said...

the worst place to be is not in the zone, but on the edge of one. You'd get the overflow parking (visitors, camper vans, commuters) and be able to do nothing about it.

Unknown said...

No no no. You clearly have not looked at the proposed plans for the rest of Cotham, Redland and Westbury Park. 20-30% of all on street parking is being removed under the guise of 'safety'. How does removing nearly a quarter of on street parking help the residents at night? Ownership of a permit does not guarantee that you'll get parked in your road, never mind outside your own house. No cares about the daytime parking - we're all at work. Its night time, when its resident-on-resident competition that's the issue, and this just makes it worse. Large parts of the proposed area do not lie within a conservation area, so there will be many demolishing their garden walls under permitted development rights. People own cars out of necessity - simply removing their ability to park on the street will not discourage ownership, it will only increase frustration.
RPS is inevitable, so we'll just have to see who is right - you or me. I really hope its you, but the proposed maps would not lead me to believe that's very likely.