Assessing the investment performance of residential suburbs subject to aircraft noise

An increasingly important issue facing developing cities is the requirement for more airports or more development of existing airports to cater for the increasing level of business, leisure and tourism air travel.In several major international cities, the airport is located in residential areas that have developed after the construction of the airport, with development further from the actual airport now under aircraft flight paths. In such residential affected suburbs, the issue of aircraft noise is raised, with an emphasis on the impact on property prices and values.There have been numerous research papers addressing the impact on price based on hedonic price models, with most of these studies showing a decline in prices for affected houses, and a smaller number of studies showing that location close to a major airport can result in higher prices due to the employment opportunities provided by major airports such as Heathrow, London.Although these studies have focussed on possible decreases or increases in house prices due to aircraft noise, there have been limited studies in relation to the long-term investment performance of houses under, adjoining or in view of aircraft flight paths and subject to aircraft noise.This paper analyses the residential property sales for 53 suburbs in Brisbane over the period 1988-2017 to assess the investment performance of these suburbs. The suburb selection includes those directly under the existing runway flight paths, several suburbs adjoining existing flight paths, and a range of suburbs that are currently not subject to aircraft noise but will be under the flight paths of the proposed second runway at Brisbane Airport that is under construction.The results show the long-term capital return based on median and average house prices, the long-term volatility and risk/return ratios for each suburb. These are compared based on the level of noise affectations.