The Wilmington Neighborhood Conservancy Land bank (WNCLB) engaged Econsult Solutions, in collaboration with the Penn Institute for Urban Research (Penn IUR), to evaluate the economic and neighborhood impacts of its efforts to acquire, remediate, and return blighted properties to productive use throughout Wilmington. Since its creation in 2016, WNCLB has focused on stabilizing neighborhoods, reducing vacancy, promoting homeownership, and supporting reinvestment.
The 2026 assessment builds on the firm’s original 2015 engagement with the city of Wilmington, in which ESI conducted the foundational cost-benefit analysis and implementation plan that supported the creation of the Wilmington Neighborhood Conservancy Land bank itself.
The analysis relied on two complementary regression models. A Price model analyzed more than 6,000 residential property sales between 2013 and 2024 to estimate how cumulative WNCLB treatments within census block groups affected nearby sale prices. The model controlled for structural housing characteristics, vacancy conditions, sale year, and neighborhood fixed effects.
A second Vacancy Reduction Model evaluated whether WNCLB activity reduced the number of vacant properties between 2016 and 2025. ESI then combined the results of both models to estimate the direct and indirect value premiums generated by land bank interventions.
The analysis produced a positive and statistically significant relationship between WNCLB interventions and nearby property values, reinforcing the Land Bank as a measurable driver of neighborhood wealth creation in Wilmington. Each additional land bank treatment within a census block group was associated with an estimated 0.7% increase in nearby home values, meaning that ten interventions in a neighborhood corresponded to approximately 7% growth in surrounding property values.