Why beautiful places perform better

The overlooked relationship between design, human behaviour, and long-term real estate value.

Real estate is an industry built around numbers: price per square metre. Yield. Occupancy. Construction cost. Rental growth. Supply. Demand. All are essential. Yet there is another factor that is much harder to capture in a spreadsheet.

How a place makes us feel.

Walk through a beautiful neighbourhood, enter a thoughtfully designed hotel, sit in a well-landscaped public square, or spend time in a building filled with natural light, and our response is almost instinctive. We want to stay. We want to return. Sometimes, we are willing to pay more to be there.

That raises an interesting question for investors and developers: Can beauty actually influence real estate performance?

We already put a price on beautiful places

Beauty is subjective. But many of the characteristics that contribute to our perception of a beautiful place are not.

Architecture. Green space. Natural light. Views. Walkability. Materials. Landscape. Proportion. Public realm. A connection to local culture.

A study published in Ecological Economics, analysing more than 35,000 residential transactions in Amsterdam, found that homes within 250 metres of attractive green space were associated with estimated price premiums of between 7.1% and 9.3%. The effect declined as distance increased.

Research from the University of Cambridge provides another interesting example. Analysing architectural form and residential transactions in Rotterdam, the study found an approximately 3.5% price premium for row houses within highly architecturally coherent ensembles compared with those facing more heterogeneous surroundings.

Neither study tells us that adding attractive landscaping or designing a beautiful façade automatically increases an asset's value by a predetermined percentage. But they demonstrate something important: features associated with the quality and attractiveness of our surroundings can become capitalised into property values.

From aesthetics to economics

The relationship becomes easier to understand when we stop thinking about beauty as decoration.

Good places influence behaviour.

A place that people enjoy can encourage them to stay longer. A neighbourhood people value can create greater residential demand. A memorable hotel can encourage guests to return. A welcoming public realm can generate activity and footfall. And those behaviours have economic consequences.

JLL's 2025 Global Consumer Experience Survey, based on 12,000 people across 19 markets and 64 cities, found that 69% of consumers were willing to pay a premium for high-quality experiences. Perhaps even more revealingly, 74% said cities need to offer new experiences to remain relevant.

This represents an important shift for real estate.

People increasingly expect buildings and destinations to do more than fulfil a function. They expect them to enhance the time they spend there. The experience of a place is becoming part of its value proposition.

Beautiful does not mean expensive

Beautiful real estate is not necessarily extravagant real estate. Beauty does not require excessive marble, expensive finishes or spectacular architecture.

Some of the most successful places are remarkably simple.

They work because the proportions feel right. Because there is natural light. Because the landscaping has been considered from the beginning rather than added at the end. Because materials age well. Because buildings respond to their surroundings. Most importantly, they feel authentic.

This matters because design that exists primarily to impress can become dated remarkably quickly. Places with a genuine identity tend to age differently.

The building is no longer the entire product

This is particularly relevant as real estate, hospitality and lifestyle increasingly converge.

Consider a mixed-use destination incorporating residences, hospitality, restaurants, wellness, workspaces and landscaped public areas. Individually, each component has a function. Together, they create an experience.

The hotel brings service. Restaurants generate activity. Landscaping creates spaces where people want to spend time. Wellness supports quality of life. Public areas create opportunities for interaction.

The value of the destination therefore becomes more than the sum of its buildings.

JLL's research suggests that mixed-use developments are now competing on experience as well as location and specification.

For investors, that changes the conversation: we are no longer evaluating only what is being built. We also need to understand what kind of life will happen there once it is built.