Do Solar Farms Devalue Property? What the Studies Find, and What Your Landowner Read

Your letter asks a farmer to lease 300 acres. His own house sits at the edge of that ground, and his brother's place is across the road. Before he answers, he types "do solar farms devalue property" into his phone.

The largest studies say yes, a little, for homes close to a solar farm. For land, the biggest one found the opposite. Berkeley Lab looked at 1.8 million home sales in six states. Homes within half a mile of a large solar project sold for 1.5% less on average than homes 2 to 4 miles away. Beyond a mile, it found no measurable effect. A 2025 national study in PNAS, from Virginia Tech and the University of Rhode Island, used 8.8 million sales. It found homes within 3 miles lost about 4.8% on average. The drop got smaller with distance and with time. The same study found farmland and vacant land within 2 miles went up about 19.4%.

Most of the pages your landowner reads give him only half of that.

What the studies actually found

Berkeley Lab, 2023

The federal lab's study covered over 1,500 solar projects in California, Connecticut, Massachusetts, Minnesota, New Jersey and North Carolina.

• Within a quarter mile: about 2.3% lower sale prices.
• Within half a mile: 1.5% lower on average.
• Half a mile to a mile: about 0.8% lower.
• One to two miles: no measurable effect.

The average hides a split. In California, Connecticut and Massachusetts, homes within half a mile showed no measurable change. In Minnesota the drop was about 4%, and in New Jersey and North Carolina it was close to 6%. The effect showed up for projects built on farmland (about 3%) and for rural homes (about 4.2%), though most of the study's rural homes sat close to towns.

Two limits matter for a developer. The projects were small, with a median of 12 acres, and the authors say the results shouldn't be applied to projects over 18 MW. They also didn't look at setbacks, landscaping or how neighbors felt about the project.

University of Rhode Island, 2020

This one studied over 400,000 sales within 3 miles of a solar site in Massachusetts and Rhode Island, two of the most crowded states in the country. Homes within a mile lost 1.7%, about $5,751. Homes within a tenth of a mile lost about 7%, though the researchers flag that estimate as less certain.

The loss came almost entirely from solar built on farms and woods in suburban towns, where open space is scarce. In rural towns, the effect was effectively zero.

Virginia Tech and Rhode Island, PNAS 2025

The biggest of the three: 3,699 solar sites and 8.8 million sales across the US, from 15 years before each site was built through 2020. The closest homes, within half a mile, lost as much as 7% to 8%. The average across 3 miles was 4.8%, shrinking with distance and over time.

Three findings in it rarely make the headlines:

• Being able to see the panels didn't make a significant difference. Being close did.
• Homes on more than five acres saw no net change. The rise in land value seemed to offset the hit to the house.
• The drop was much smaller, or reversed, in politically left-leaning counties. The authors read the effect as mostly stigma, a reaction to what solar means to people, though they don't rule out physical causes.

Appraisers and assessors

Then there are the appraiser studies that turn up at county hearings. CohnReznick studied homes next to solar farms in Illinois and Indiana and found no consistent negative impact. A North Carolina appraiser ran nearly 100 matched sales comparisons and found an average difference of about 1%. He did those studies for solar developers, and an owner who checks will find that out.

A University of Texas survey of 37 appraisers found the median and most common estimate of impact was zero. The ones who had experience valuing property near solar expected less harm than the ones who didn't.

Both sides have a point

The people saying no to solar farms aren't making the effect up. It shows up in the federal lab's data and in the largest national study. A 7% loss on the closest homes is real money to the family that owns one. The studies report averages, so a single house can do worse.

The industry side overstates its case too. One state solar association's FAQ tells readers that studies haven't found solar farms reduce nearby property values. A landowner who reads that and then finds the Berkeley Lab number stops trusting both.

What the full record supports is narrower and easier to defend. Homes close to the project see a small average drop, which shrinks with distance and time. The federal study found little or nothing beyond a mile, and land went up.

The owner you're asking is also a neighbor

Your landowner reads all this twice. Once as the man who lives on the farm, and once as the man who has to face his brother and the family down the road.

For his own place, the closest match in the data is good news. Farmland near solar went up, and homes on more than five acres saw no net change. These studies also measure sale prices only. None of them count decades of rent.

The second reading is harder. Economists at the University of Wisconsin point to what researchers call the "rural burden": the feeling that solar takes rural land to power somebody else's city. Your landowner may agree with his neighbors on that and still want the lease. What he's weighing is whether he can explain himself at church.

So when he asks "will this hurt property values," he usually means two things. What happens to mine, and what do I tell them.

How to answer him in plain words

Give him the bad number first. If he hears it from you, you're the one telling the truth. If he finds it after you said "no impact," you're the one who lied.

Something like this, from whoever takes the call:

"Some studies do find a drop. The big federal one found homes within half a mile sold for about one and a half percent less on average, and nothing measurable past a mile. A 2025 study found a bigger drop, about five percent within three miles, that shrank with distance and over the years. That same study found farmland near solar went up. I'll send you both."

Then say what's true about this project:

• How many homes sit within half a mile of where the panels would go.
• The setback from the nearest house, and what screening goes along the road.
• Anything the project offers neighbors. Berkeley Lab's authors name compensation for neighbors, planted screening and combining solar with another use of the land, especially for large, rural or farmland projects.

What not to do: don't tell him studies show no impact. Don't hand him a study your industry paid for without saying who paid for it. And don't bring property values up in the first letter. Have the answer ready for the owner who asks. It's one of the questions landowners search before they reply, and he'll ask it on the first call.

The owners who never read any of this

Everything above assumes your letter found him.

On most lists, a share of owners never see it. The deed names an LLC and the mail goes to a registered agent. The owner died and the heirs live in three states. The address on file is ten years old. Those owners haven't read the Berkeley Lab study or your letter. What to tell the neighbors never comes up, because nobody asked them anything. Finding the person behind an LLC is often the first job.

On one campaign for a developer in Georgia, 1 in 9 parcels wanted to talk about a lease once their owners were reached another way. Across six campaigns, 214 parcels did.

If you want a rough sense of how many owners on your list never got that far, put your parcel count into the calculator.