Investor · Long Beach, CA · Member since 2014 · 56 posts · 12 votes
I am looking at some properties a few blocks away from a freight train track. Does anyone know how close is considered too close where it would start to hurt the resale value of the property?
Obviously a property 500ft away is gonna have crummy resale value. But how about 2500ft?
San Jose, CA · Member since 2015 · 4k+ posts · 3k+ votes
11y
Since the track has been there (not something new), the value should be easy to figure out with comps.
You get used to the sound of trains, in my experience. The only place I lived where the train noise was horrendous, was a house I bought on the Canadian border in WA. It was all I could afford. The regulations for how the train cars have to be spaced was different in either country, so the train cars would have to be rearranged to cross the border. This involves "coupling" which is done by train cars bashing into each other, to hook them to each other. Sounds like an explosion/earthquake from hell LOL! I never did get used to that noise. Only lived there a couple years.
But, I've lived in downtown areas close to train tracks and you just get used to it. Since you'd be buying/selling in an area with known train noise, I'd think the property value shouldn't be affected in the future by it. No surprises. And since they'd be a few blocks away, you shouldn't be dealing with the hobos that hang out by the tracks.