★ Bob Clark: Property Values At Risk

Grass Valley resident Bob Clark did his own research to learn whether his property value would suffer if Rise Gold opens the Idaho-Maryland Mine. The resounding answer was YES.

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... Knowing that the three most important factors in real estate values are location, location, and location, I wondered what the impact might be on my home value if all of a sudden it was close to an operating mine. Knowing that our local real estate agents do all of the Grass Valley real estate transactions and that they are the foremost experts on Grass Valley real estate, I called the person who does the largest volume of transactions and has for years.

When I asked for their professional assessment of what would happen if the mine reopened, they didn’t hesitate.

“Your home value and that of all your neighbors will drop by $50,000 to $100,00.”

Still in a bit of shock, I called another high volume agent, and another, and another, and another, and another …. They all 100% agreed: Property values would decline. I went online to see if I could find any fact-based study of what actually happened in another case where a mine was opened in a residential area.

After much searching, I found a study done by two PhDs at the University of Minnesota. I called them and they sent me a copy of their study. What they found, based on actual property sales over a nine-year period, was that properties within a one-mile radius of the mine site dropped 20%. But wait, they found that values dropped for up to a 7-mile radius, though less so, as the property was further from the mine site...

Read the full op-ed in The Union.