re: Shreveportians lose their minds over tree trimming

I love an old oak as much as everyone, but what did you want them to do here? Their job is not looks, if they did it for looks they'd be back every 6 months. Utility trimmers have literally 1000s of miles to maintain.

To the guy that said underground, um do you not realize the root ball and base on those oaks? You can't have mature trees anywhere close to underground utilities and certainly can't move them underground with mature trees there.

quote:

---

Shreveport is spending millions on replacing its old, crumbling sewer system they don't have the money to run utilities underground right now

---

Shouldn't you put the utilities underground while you have the street open to replace the sewer system?

This is riveting stuff. Great update from Shreveport

quote:

---

the trees add value to the neighborhood as a whole

---

aesthetics? yes value? no

we will have to agree to disagree.

quote:

---

Am I taking crazy pills? How is this even debatable. A residential property with stately live oaks or other types of preferable trees will sell for more than one without them.

---

I have no idea

I've lived here 7 years now and had maybe 2 power outages.

Neither were caused by limbs/trees.

quote:

---

Are people really going to argue that this property is as valuable without trees as it is with them?

---

I am convinced that people on this thread are being deliberately obtuse.

Appraisal is done via comps.

The comps are more worthy the closer they are to the subject When searching for comps, you find houses that have sold that are around the same size and condition in the same neighborhood and then you make small adjustments for the differences, but primarily the work is just about finished when you have a collection of similar sized houses in similar shape in the same neighborhood as your subject.

A neighborhood with mature oaks will have higher values for ALL the houses in that neighborhood than a hypothetical exact same neighborhood that is treeless, because mature oaks have a huge positive aesthetic impact.

I wonder if people in this thread have ever sold a house? Landscaping makes an ENORMOUS difference. Well, a street of huge oak trees is in essence a landscaping feature that money can't even buy and install like grass or shrubs.

Given that ALL the comps in a neighborhood with mature oaks will benefit from the trees, THE VALUE IS BUILT INTO THE COMPS AND ISN'T SOMETHING YOU FIGURE SEPARATELY FOR UNLESS IT ISN'T THERE. An oak tree is not something that an appraiser line-item accounts for, because it is already accounted for in the comps he is using, which, because they are nearby, will all have oaks.

But, if all the oak trees in a neighborhood prized for its trees over other neighborhoods nearby which don't have tress suddenly lost its trees, the values would fall down to the level of those of the treeless nearby neighborhoods because that positive differentiation (the trees) would be gone. This would be reflected in selling prices, and thus in the comps used by appraisers to determine value, and as such, an appraiser STILL wouldn't be figuring the contributory value of the oak by itself because it would already be reflected in the comps he was using.

quote:

---

They aren't adding any value to that neighborhood

---

They would if it started to gentrify. The presence of those trees would make it a target for gentrification over areas that didn't have them. See: the Heights in Houston.