On Common Ground - Winter 2017: Walkable Neighborhoods

Discussing walkability without mentioning Walk Score is like trying to discuss the weather without mentioning the temperature.

Walk Score, a website launched by two former Micro-soft employees in 2007, is a much quoted authority on the walkability of real estate ranging from a home to a neighborhood to an entire city.

A recent Walk Score report showed that a one-point increase in the Walk Score of a home can increase the median sales price by an average of nearly 1 percent or $3,250.

Now owned by nationwide real estate brokerage Redfin, Walk Score uses a proprietary algorithm to calculate walkability scores on a scale of 1 to 100 for every address in the country, sharing its data with more than 30,000 websites that show a combined 20 million scores per day — a clear sign that people care about walkability when choosing where to live.