Living Next to Fancy Supermarkets Will Make Your Rent Go Up

The whole-paycheck jokes about Whole Foods may have some homeowners laughing all the way to the bank.

Information released by Zillow, the online real-estate database company, says that your local supermarket is more than just a place to pick up a quart of milk. The identity of your local grocer may actually affect the value of your home. And if that store is a Whole Foods or Trader Joe's, your house might appreciate faster than homes in other locations.

Thanks, Whole Foods! Maybe that asparagus water is worth it, after all!

Zillow analyzed the value of millions of homes near dozens of Trader Joe's and Whole Foods and found that between 1997 and 2014, homes located near one of these stores were worth more than the median price of other US homes. In fact, by the end of 2014, homes within a mile of either store were worth two times the median home price in the rest of the country.

Also, the study found that after the Whole Foods and Trader Joe's stores' opening dates, homes near Whole Foods appreciated more quickly than other area homes. "Two years after a Trader Joe's opened, the median home within a mile of the store had appreciated 10 percentage points more than homes in the city as a whole over the previous year," Zillow says.

OK, you may be thinking, those chains are known for opening stores in upscale communities—places where people live who can afford their prices. But the data seems to suggest that this may not just be a correlation, but a matter of causation.

Zillow Group Chief Economist Stan Humphries says, "Like a self-fulfilling prophecy, the stores may actually drive home prices. Even if they open in neighborhoods where home prices have lagged those in the wider city, they start to outperform the city overall once the stores arrive."

All we can say is that the Zillow report may very well set off an explosion of home-buying speculation, based not on the old adage of "location, location, location" but instead on proximity to organic coconut oil, frozen samosas, and boxed wine.