A Look At Real Estate Sales Near Wolverine Creek Windfarm

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Story Published: Aug 6, 2008 at 9:14 PM MST

Story Updated: Nov 21, 2008 at 12:17 AM MST

By Mary Sturgill

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BONNEVILLE COUNTY - Earlier this week the Bingham County Commissioners cleared the way for two separate windfarms to be built. People opposing both decisions can still file for a judicial review.
When you go to the Planning and Zoning meetings for the windfarms, one argument against putting them in that is brought up over and over again is that they will cause property values to decrease. Orin Morgan owns land near one of the proposed sites in an interview with him on April 22, 2008, Morgan told Eyewitness News. "We feel like with these windmills coming in, if people don't like windmills it's gonna be hard to sell it and if we try to sell it we'll probably take a big loss."

So we looked into the theory. We called a local Realtor. Steven Hatch is the President of the local Realtors Association, "People gravitate toward the negative you know. They want to see the negative for some reason and I guess it's just in all of us, but when you look at the actual data, the stats show that properties are still selling up there, above the statistical norm." And then we took a hard look at the data for houses sold so far this year. Here are three properties: A house on Sagewood Dr. Was listed at $212,500. It sold for $208,500. That's 98% of the asking price. Owners listed a home on Marble Circle for $324,900. It sold for $310,000. That's 95% of the listing price. A house on Skidmore Dr. was listed at $380,000. It sold for $355,000. That's 93.42% of the listing price and the lowest percentage we could find.

Adam Jardine with Century 21 says the windmills aren't potential homeowners concerns, "I took some foreigners up there, from England and the windmills didn't bother them, they were worried about the wind itself." And we all know when you're living in Eastern Idaho, there's no escaping the wind.
Eyewitness News is neither for nor against the windfarms. We just looked at the data and the numbers speak for themselves.

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