Looking for homes near pickleball courts? Obsessed with pickleball?
Pickleball is having a MASSIVE impact on the housing market. Don’t believe me? I’ll prove it.
In this post, we’re uncovering the hidden link between home sale competitiveness and proximity to pickleball courts in the Triangle.
I’m going to look at days on market, over list price offers and multiple offers to see whether pickleball homes were more or less competitive than those without access to pickleball. The results are shocking.
The Pickleball Effect
Maybe you’ve heard of the Costco effect? The “Costco Effect” is a term used in real estate and economic development to describe the boost in home values, demand, and desirability that often occurs in neighborhoods near a newly opened Costco…or even just when one is announced.
Now, I don’t know if the mere announcement of a new pickleball facility is enough to boost home sale prices, but I do know that there is a strong connection between pickleball and how much competition there is in the homes surrounding the courts.
So many of my buyer clients were asking about pickleball facilities nearby that I had a hunch something was going on with this. I decided to dig into the data. Since we don’t have a pickleball designation in the MLS, for this analysis, I pulled all the homes that sold where the word “pickleball” was listed in the agent’s remarks.
This group included homes that are in communities with pickleball in the neighborhood, homes that are near city parks with pickleball courts as well as homes that have private pickleball courts in their backyards. Here’s what I discovered when I stacked pickleball homes against everything else in the Triangle.
First I looked at the big picture: How long did it take to sell a Pickleball home vs a No Pickleball home?
Time to Sell: Pickleball vs No Pickleball
As you can see, homes with pickleball sold faster than homes without pickleball; about 14% faster.
- No Pickleball 🟦 → ~23.6 days
- Pickleball 🟧 → ~20.5 days
Sales Competition: Pickleball vs No Pickleball
Okay, so they sold faster overall and not by a huge amount, but what about prices. Do these homes actually sell for more money?
I looked at the average sale price to list price ratio and I looked at the percent of homes that had competing offers in homes with and without pickleball.
Pickleball homes definitely did sell for more money, but like the days on market, only a little bit more.
The average sales price to list price ratio was .8% higher in pickleball sales versus non pickleball sales. And it was a similar story with competing offers. Pickleball sales had more of them, but again about a ½ a percent. Not really statistically significant.
And this slight bump just wasn’t matching the feeling on the ground I was getting about how many buyers value pickleball.
The averages told one story, but I had a hunch the real action was hiding underneath. I needed to look at the data in a couple of different ways to figure out if something was getting lost in the big picture.
Competition by Age of Home
It occurred to me that homes in communities with pickleball might be much newer than homes without pickleball amenities. And newer homes in better condition will often be more competitive. So I wanted to control for that age to see if there was a difference in pickleball sales across different home age groups.
Interestingly, those built before 1990 with access to pickleball, sold significantly faster than most other age groups.
This surprised me because I had assumed that most pickleball courts were in newer communities with more modern amenities. And there may be more of them in newer communities, but it appears that buyers *really* want pickleball in established communities.
And this is where it gets really exciting. While pickleball homes sold the fastest in the 0-5 years old group (we will talk about why in just a minute) when I looked at the homes that got over list offers, everything changed.
There was massive demand in homes built before 1999 that had access to pickleball.
Close to 50% of homes with pickleball that were built in the 90s had over list offers, compared to only 29% in the control group. And 42% of homes built before 1990 with access to pickleball had over list offers, compared to 25% in the control group.
Something isn’t adding up!
But something in the age breakdown didn’t add up — newer homes with pickleball were actually less competitive.
The newest homes with pickleball amenities had the fewest over list offers.
This made me think that maybe location was playing a bigger role in this than just the pickleball. Older housing inventory is typically located in the most established communities with the most amenities.
In addition to pickleball courts, most older homes in the Triangle are surrounded by good restaurants, lots of great parks with walking trails, facilities for the arts and just so many other things to do. My reasoning is that those newer homes that aren’t as competitive are likely located in more rural areas without these additional amenities.
When I looked at the data by location, I found that the more central the location the better pickleball homes perform. The more rural the location, the worse pickleball homes performed.
Competition by Location
My hypothesis is that people who appreciate the amenities of pickleball also value the additional amenities that come with being in a more urban core like Raleigh, Cary, Apex and so on.
As a matter of fact, with the notable exception of Rolesville, every single town where pickleball homes outperformed the control group was located in Western Wake County. Western Wake is much more amenity rich compared to eastern Wake County.
Having said all of that, it’s apparent that pickleball DOES have a significant impact on how much buyers are willing to pay for homes with access to pickleball courts in Western Wake County!
Compared to the non pickleball homes, pickleball homes in Raleigh had 66% more over list offers, Cary had 41% more, Apex had 26% more, Holly Springs had 30% more and New Hill had a whopping 290% more over list offers compared to the control group.
Competition by Price
Still, I couldn’t shake the feeling that I was missing another piece of the puzzle.
Was the pickleball effect really about the amenity itself — or was it about price point? At first glance it looked like pickleball homes were simply clustered in certain areas or age groups.
But maybe that wasn’t the whole story. Maybe it comes down to buyer priorities: entry-level buyers focused on affordability and space might place less value on amenities like pickleball. To test that, I broke the sales into price ranges — and that’s where I was able to prove my hypothesis.
You can see that the lower the price point, the less value pickleball has on the competitiveness of the home.
Case in point, at the lowest price points, pickleball is even LESS competitive than non-pickleball homes. This makes sense if we think about what is important to entry level buyers.
Homes with amenities usually cost more per square foot than homes without. And in this market, entry level buyers are struggling to even get into a home. Amenities at the lowest price tier hold less value than getting enough square footage for your family.
But then I realized… maybe the lack of competition in the lowest price points is because the lowest price points are also on the eastern side of Wake County. Would this same pattern hold if we looked at it by price point in a higher cost of living city? I decided to break it down by price point in Cary to find out.
And look at that! The pickleball effect returns in all but the lowest quartile of prices and in that group the difference is negligible.
So it looks like my hypothesis was likely correct, that on the west side of the county, people place a higher value on amenities than on the east side.
And the lack of pickleball effect at the lowest pricing tier in Cary is likely due to those homes being older and a larger percentage of the older homes being in rough condition, which would diminish the number of over list offers, even if pickleball were available.
Triangle Communities with Pickleball
Want to browse homes for sale in Triangle communities with pickleball courts? Check these out!
Apex
Cary
Fuquay-Varina
Holly Springs
- 12 Oaks
- Woodbury – To be added
