Pride: How Gay Populations Can Increase Neighborhood Values

Trulia and OKCupid crunched the numbers to figure out how gay populations have increased neighborhood values.

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It is the last week of Pride Month and neighborhoods across the country are waving the rainbow flag and cleaning up multi-colored feathers, beads and confetti. The festivals of the past few weekends drew hundreds of thousands of Pride participants to places with familiar names like Greenwich, West Hollywood, the Castro or Boys Town. Can Pride increase neighborhood values?

Trulia regularly checks into the value of homes in these neighborhoods, first investigating at the bottom of the housing market in 2012 and again in 2015, discovering that homeowners pay a premium to live where there is a large same-sex population. Now that it is five years since the bottom, Trulia is once again checking on the price to enter these markets in its recent article Pride of the Neighborhood.

In honor of Pride, Trulia collaborated with OKCupid, to ensure the accuracy of the gay population count. In past reports, Trulia relied upon Census data, which only reflects the percentage of same-sex couples in each neighborhood without taking into account the population of same-sex singles. OkCupid’s exclusive data allows for a more accurate accounting of the concentration of same-sex residents in neighborhoods nationwide.

Trulia determines its Neighborhood Pride Score by combining the percent of OkCupid’s users searching for in same-sex partners in each ZIP code to the percent of same-sex couples identified in 2015 5-year American Community Survey (ACS). For instances, Zip codes with 35 percent of OkCupid users searching for same-sex partners and 20 percent of ACS identified same-sex households has a Neighborhood Pride Score of 0.55. Trulia next calculates the median value per square foot of homes for sale in each ZIP code as of April 1, 2017 comparing it to the median value per square foot of homes as of April 1, 2012.

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In 2012, homebuyers wishing to live in a high Pride-Score neighborhood paid 28.9 percent, an average of $209 per square foot. Flash forward five years, now homebuyers seeking to live in communities with high concentrations of gay, lesbian and bisexual residents pay 36.8 percent more. The price per square foot jumped to $320.

High Pride Score: Neighborhood Values with Increasing Premiums

New York, New Orleans, and Boston are the metros experience higher demand in communities with higher Neighborhood Pride scores. The premium to buy a NYC apartment is 56 percentage points increasing from a 106 percent premium in 2012 to a 162 percent premium now. New Orleans follows closely with a 52-percentage point increase in its premium to buy a home, going from 99 percent to 151 percent. Rounding out the top three is Boston where premiums for its real estate increased 27 percentage points a premium jump from 79 percent in 2012 to 105 percent now.

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High Pride Score: Neighborhood Values with Decreasing Premiums

Miami, Buffalo N.Y., and San Francisco decreases in the premium paid to live in high Neighborhood Pride scoring communities. The premium to buy a Miami Condo is 13 percentage points lower dropping from 73 percent to 60 percent between 2012 and 2017. Buffalo is a close second with premiums sliding from -7 percent to -17 percent. The biggest surprise is San Francisco where premiums on homes in communities with large populations of same-sex residents fell 6 percentage points.

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Methodology

Trulia determines the Neighborhood Pride Score by combining the percent of OkCupid’s users searching for in same sex partners in each ZIP code to the percent of same-sex couples identified in 2015 5-year American Community Survey (ACS). For instances, Zip codes with 35 percent of OkCupid users searching for same-sex partners and 20 percent of ACS identified same-sex households has a Neighborhood Pride Score of 0.55. Trulia next calculates the median value per square foot of homes for sale in each ZIP code as of April 1, 2017 comparing it to the median value per square foot of homes as of April 1, 2012.

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