Living next to a Dunkin’ can boost property values, but don’t glaze over the downside
Deeply woven into the fabric of New England, the chain’s presence can have a profound effect on the real estate that surrounds it.
Georgina Miles thought nothing of seeing a police cruiser parked outside the Dunkin’ next to her family’s Beacon Hill home. Around 1 or 2 a.m. on Feb. 18, Miles, 29, was walking home from a friend’s house when she spotted the officers peering into the Dunkin’, which sits across from the State House. As she entered her lobby, Miles was hit with a foul smell. When she awoke the next morning, the stench was exponentially worse.
“This overwhelming smell of corpse began to take over our whole building,” said Miles, a marketing coordinator for a women’s health startup, who had to leave the fifth-floor unit for a few days. The smell was worst in the lobby, mere steps from the Dunkin’ next door, which is closed on weekends. Miles was worried that something or someone had died in the vicinity.
“We have quite a few older people in the building,” Miles said. “Thankfully, they were all accounted for.”
Dunkin’ did not respond to requests for comment, there is no police report on the incident, and it’s unclear what caused the smell and where it originated.
The management company was called in to add deodorizers and investigate the smell emanating from the basement the residential building shares with Dunkin’. While the stench eventually subsided, residents were never told what caused the olfactory assault that crept up to the penthouse, above Miles’s home. Sure, being able to grab a medium regular downstairs may be convenient, but living in the vicinity of Dunkin’ can cause more problems than what fits into a box of Munchkins.
And remarkable benefits.
In Massachusetts, it’s not unlikely to see one Dunkin’ in the distance while you wait in the drivethrough of another. Deeply woven into the fabric of New England, the chain’s presence can have a profound effect on the real estate that surrounds it. In their 2015 book, “Zillow Talk: The New Rules of Real Estate,” Stan Humphries, then the platform’s chief economist, and Spencer Rascoff, then CEO, wrote that homes near Dunkin’s and Starbucks have appreciated 80 percent since 1997.
“Between 1997 and 2012, homes now located near Starbucks and Dunkin’ Donuts followed similar historical trajectories, substantially outpacing the overall home value appreciation,” they wrote. This was similarly noted in a 2018 Harvard Business School study examining housing price data and Yelp reviews, which determined that the entry of Starbucks and other cafes into a neighborhood is indicative of housing price growth.
Katherine Kranenburg, a luxury marketing specialist and content creator, calls this the “Starbucks Effect” and said it’s a “total bonus” for real estate.
“It builds a sense of community. You find out about things at a coffee shop,” Kranenburg said. “Some of the top people that I’ve gone to conferences with, if they’re traveling and they want to know an area, they will go and sit at the coffee shop.”
Samantha Stumpo lives next to a Dunkin’ and across the street from a Starbucks on West Broadway in South Boston, and hits one of the two daily. (“I eat a doughnut every day, but nobody believes me,” she said.) As a realtor, she believes having a restaurant establishment close by is better than open retail, which can make people feel “uncomfortable.” As a Bostonian, having both places nearby makes her “feel at home.”
Of course, the benefits of living in the proximity of Dunkin’ aren’t New England-specific. Sarene Leeds, professional writer and host of the podcast “Emotional Abuse is Real,” lives in White Plains, N.Y., across from a Dunkin’ inside a Citgo station. Her 7-year-old daughter, Diana, loves the occasional visit to Dunkin’ for a chocolate-frosted donut with rainbow sprinkles. When the family visited Boston, they made sure to snap Diana’s photo in front of the Dunkin’ on Washington Street in Downtown Crossing.
“She was like, ‘I really want to go there,’” Leeds said, “so we took a picture of her there and got her a donut. It was really special.”
Despite the convenience, there are downsides to living so close to Dunkin’.
Derek Camara, 36, is occasionally awoken between 3:30 and 4:30 a.m. by a dump truck attempting to fit down the alley to empty the garbage at the Dunkin’ behind his Dorchester home. Because a chain-link gate was installed at the alley’s entrance, drivers have a difficult time maneuvering their way into the space.
“It’s literally a scene from ‘Austin Powers,’” said Camara, referencing the fictitious British spy’s attempt to perform a three-point turn. “I want to lose my mind.”
Residents who live near Dunkin’ drive-through locations also must deal with traffic. Jillian McGrath, 29, found herself trapped in her parking space on Christmas Day because the drive-through line for a Dunkin’ stretched down the length of her Fall River street.
“You would think people were home, but no, everybody’s out trying to get their coffee,” said McGrath, who works at a different Dunkin’, but hopes to attend medical school. “I was able to pull out after like 10 minutes.”
In addition to the stench that overtook her building, or the time a pipe burst “and it looked like a swimming pool in our basement,” Miles said her “biggest gripe” is with the Dunkin’ customers “who have relieved themselves on their doorstep.” Because her home is so close to the Freedom Trail, tourists mistakenly assume that the Dunkin’ has a public bathroom. As a result, events like the Boston Marathon or Patriots and Red Sox parades result in discoveries of human waste on the doorstep.
“It’s just sort of expected at those times that we find Dunkin’ cups full of urine or feces,” said Miles, who noted that it’s tourists and sports revelers she spots relieving themselves on her stoop. “We see quite a bit of vomit, too.”
While there are pros and cons of living next to a Dunkin’, everyone we spoke to noted one thing: It’s extremely convenient.
Kyle Hemingway, 36, a creative strategist, previously lived diagonally across from the Dunkin’ inside the New Store on the Block on Dorchester Avenue. Every morning, he’d glance out the window and witness the distinct New England beauty of a bunch of people with cigarettes in one hand and Dunkin’ cups in the other, watching the Keno numbers roll in through the window. If the line was so long it was streaming out the door, he’d skip his morning order.
“That’s how I would gauge whether or not I was getting my coffee,” said Hemingway.