Fresnoland82%
New Fresno State research looks at impact of Clovis Costco move on home prices 49%
By Danielle Bergstrom72%
7/20/2026, 1:58:50 PM
BS Summary: This article contains 18 faulty reasoning types, including Negativity Bias, Hasty Generalization, and Post Hoc (False Cause), with Unattributed Quote as the most egregious example at 17.6% saturation with 105 hits. Analysis detected 686 faulty-reasoning hits from 596 analyzed words, generating a BS Score of 50.1% and a BS Rank of 49% (9,730 of 18,900 articles). This article is better (less manipulative) than 51.50% of the article peer group.
Does welcoming Costco into your neighborhood improve property values?
According to a team of researchers at Fresno State, the answer is – it depends.
The researchers – Andres Jauregui, Mohammed Fallah, and Jaquelin Curry – all professors in the Craig School of Business – studied how the relocation of Costco’s southwest Clovis location to the central part of the city in 2019 would impact home prices in both neighborhoods.
They found a jump of around 8-9% in home values for residential neighborhoods within two miles of the old location at Ashlan and Peach Avenues, near the Fresno Yosemite International airport – while home prices around the new location just 1.5 miles northeast, at Clovis and Shaw Avenues in central Clovis, near the Sierra Vista Mall, remained the same, when controlling for other factors.
“I think we were kind of expecting property values to increase,” said Jauregui, who heads the Gazarian Real Estate Center at Fresno State, referring to the old Costco location.
He explained that the likely drop in localized traffic and noise after Costco left likely contributed to the price gains.
The surrounding southwest Clovis residential areas were able to escape the fate of many south Fresno neighborhoods that have seen a decline in investment as retailers have moved north.
The former Costco warehouse, first built in 1990, didn’t remain vacant for too long; developer Jerry Cook purchased the building for $5.5 million in 2020 and was able to land a long-term lease to relocate Fresno County’s Department of Social Services into the building in 2022.
The study was published in the June 2026 edition of the Journal of Real Estate Practice and Education.
In the neighborhoods by the new Costco, home prices went down at first during the initial assessment and construction periods, but then rebounded back once the new warehouse opened.
Curry, one of the researchers who is also a local real estate broker, said she was somewhat surprised that it took some time for the market to respond positively to Costco’s new warehouse.
And Clovis officials said that they saw an uptick in real estate transactions around the new location at Clovis and Shaw Avenues, once Costco made their relocation announcement, even as it took a few years for the data to show impact.
When asked how much their results could apply to Fresno – where a contentious debate continues over Costco’s proposed relocation from West Shaw Avenue near Highway City further north to Herndon and Riverside Avenues, they demurred, saying that the circumstances between the two relocations are very different.
In Clovis, just two people appealed the Planning Commission’s approval of the new Costco location in 2018.
But in Fresno, the city’s decision to approve Costco was met with litigation, with a neighborhood group expressing concerns over traffic and air quality.
They also said that it’s often hard to isolate the effects of a specific retailer’s location change when there’s so many other factors at play – like in the case of Fresno, there’s also a lot of high-speed rail-related construction nearby.
What’s the lesson from this study?
“Companies need to be working closely with government officials to assess positive impacts, and be open about it,” said Jauregui.
They noted that the perception of locating new warehouse centers, from Costco to Wal-Mart or Sam’s Club, usually is negative, at least at first, even as those retailers tend to bring new jobs or attract other investment to the area.
“Positive impacts are not always evenly distributed,” he added.
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