Central Valley homeowners are watching property values sink with the land

In parts of the San Joaquin Valley, sinking land has become such a serious problem, it is beginning to depress home prices, new research shows.

Homes in large portions of California’s Central Valley have been sinking, as have roads, bridges, canals and levees, as too much water is drawn out of underground aquifers.

Now researchers at UC Riverside have found that home sale prices are 2.4% to 5.4% lower than they would be if the land were stable, translating to per-home losses of $6,689 to $16,165. The paper looks at sales between 2015 and 2021.

Mehdi Nemati, a UC Riverside assistant professor of environmental economics and policy who led the study, said his team knew that sinking land was already affecting homes and homeowners across the Central Valley, with cracking foundations, dry