Real Estate Agents Discover Walk Score

I was in one of my most favorite walkable cities on vacation last week, Portland, no not that Portland but the one in Maine, and I came across this article (Walk-Friendly Neighborhoods Gain Appeal, by Patricia V. Rivera, June 20, 2008*) in the Portland Press Harold Sunday Real Estate Section that rang true. The thrust of the article is that to have greater access to exercise options and to reduce one's reliance on driving a car, more and more homeowners and renters place a high value on the "walkability" of where they choose to live.

The article goes on to say that the Google enabled WalkScore.com web site (How Walkable Is Your Neighborhood?, July 18, 2007) has become a popular place for consumers and now Real Estate agents in helping them figure out a home's walkability. Walk Score co-creator Matt Lerner is quoted as saying of the site, which receives 100,000 visits a day, "Increasingly, it's a tool for real estate agents. We hope to see more listings that read 2 bedrooms, 1 bathroom, 1,200 square feet, Walk Score 90," he says.

We've been discussing these ideas for some time and we're happy to see that the mainstream media is picking up these themes too. It shows that increasingly people are looking at more than curb appeal and the bottom line when choosing where to live and are taking into account the ability to walk places rather than hop in a car to get everywhere. And that's a good thing for all of us.

* Note the article in the link is for the same article printed a couple of weeks earlier in Seattle. Thus a different title, but the exact same article.

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Chris Hamilton is the Commuter Services Chief for Arlington County, manager of CommuterPageBlog and The TDM Professional blog and is a biking/Metrorail commuter from Alexandria, Virginia just outside of Washington, D.C.

Comments

[Demon]

It’s difficult to me to understand how computer counts my walk, drive and others scores. By what criterion it judges? I always don’t agree with my mark and I feel upset! I don’t need most things (Gas Station, Railway Station) that computer proposing to me. But I found a service http://drivescore.fizber.com/ that offers me to choose things by myself. And my score become much higher.