From Trees to Rents: How Visible Greenery Shapes Real Estate Value

Dennis Lee
Jun 19
2 min read

by Dennis Lee, CEO at Market Stadium

We believe greenery plays a meaningful role in shaping housing rents. But how we measure “green” can drastically change the answer.

At Market Stadium, we explored this relationship from two very different perspectives—and found strikingly different outcomes.

🔎 Bird’s-Eye View: Using satellite-derived NDVI data, we approximated the green view index from above. The result? A negative correlation—greener areas often had lower rents, likely because dense vegetation tends to appear more in suburban neighborhoods.

**Zoomed in version of the NDVI around central park.**

🧠 Street-Level Perspective: Switching to a pedestrian’s-eye view using Google Street View images and computer vision, we measured greenery as perceived from the ground. This flipped the result: in places like Queens and Brooklyn, more visible greenery correlated with higher rents, reflecting the value of greenery as experienced by residents.

**Categorized street view image (green: green, blue: car, yellow: sidewalk, brown: building).**

These contrasting findings highlight a powerful insight:

👉 Greenery isn’t just about what’s there—it’s about what people experience.

And when it comes to real estate investment, we believe perception-based variables—like pedestrian-visible greenery—may be far more aligned with how people actually make housing decisions.

What's Next?

We’re expanding our street-level Green View Index (GVI) analysis and working to integrate it into the Market Stadium platform. This will equip investors with deeper, perception-driven insights into how visible greenery influences property values, rent potential, and neighborhood appeal.

Looking ahead, we're also exploring ways to calculate and provide this GVI metric at scale—across the entire U.S.

If successful, this could become a powerful new variable within our platform, helping investors understand not just where the green is, but where it feels the greenest.