George Catelli &Starbucks

Apparently, the caffeine addled are willing to pay more for a house. That's the finding of a Harvard study of what happens to home prices when a Starbucks moves into the neighborhood. CNBC reports:

Each new Starbucks boosts the value of housing prices in a neighborhood. And not by an insignificant amount.

This data point is revealed in a broader study on gentrification by the Harvard Business School that relied on information from Yelp, the online restaurant review platform, and the United States Census.

A new Starbucks introduced into a ZIP code is associated with a 0.5 percent increase in housing prices within a year, the paper found.

It's not clear whether housing prices are rising due to the Starbucks opening itself or simply because more affluent customers that would go to the coffee chain have moved into the area.

Harvard economics professor Edward Glaeser said Yelp data reveals it may be the latter. The study found that each 10-unit increase in the number of reviews is associated with a 1.4 percent increase in housing prices in the ZIP code.

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