Development of View Analysis Metrics and Their Financial Impacts on Office Rents

A view contributes to a person’s visual perception, comfort and health in a building—reducing stress, improving concentration, increasing productivity and bolstering creativity. Yet, what makes a view alluring is also what makes it ineffable and difficult to characterize. In this study, we introduce two new metrics to quantitatively assess view access in open floorplans, and using the metrics we measure the economic impact of views on office rents in Manhattan, New York City. What we find is that spaces with high access to views have a 6% net effective rent premium over spaces with low access to views. This financial impact is independent of other value drivers, such as daylight. In the case where there is both high daylight and view access there is also a 6% net effective rent premium.

Office tenants value views and have historically paid for them. The value of views is evident in human health data and, as shown in this paper, in tenant lease prices. The metrics introduced in this work can also be used in architectural design and planning to analyze the potential for views in new and existing buildings. Overall, the method proposed in this work provides a systematic means by which to further explore the value of views.

Methodology:

We evaluate spatial view access in 5,154 office spaces, and then combining the view analysis results with rent transaction data we model the financial performance of rents paid by tenants with varying views whilst controlling for other vital factors impacting office rents.

 

 

What constitutes a view? A view can be defined as the ability to see a combination of landmarks, other buildings, green spaces, water, or the ground. Views of the sky — while important to tenants — are categorized as daylight access, not views, for the purposes of this study.
Image 1: Illustration of rays being projected from the 32nd floor of an office building in Manhattan, NYC. The graphic depicts the spatially-distributed grid of view points as black dots, and the colored lines radiating from one point on the floor depict the rays that are traced from one viewpoint. Each color indicates the type of view element intersected by the ray in the surrounding context.