Buyers Pay More For Houses In A Great School District
Building on last week’s blog discussing Ridgefield High School’s phenomenal school ranking, it pays to buy a house in a sought-after and highly ranked school district. According to a recent study just published on Realtor.com, in most markets, families are willing to pay more for a highly ranked school than an extra bedroom, a shorter commute, and even big home features such as a swimming pool, higher ceilings, sport courts, and even a private dock.
Realtor.com overlaid data from their residential listings database with granular school ratings from GreatSchools.org. Specifically, they aggregated key price, demand and supply metrics for all homes listed during the first half of 2016, and compared properties located in school districts rated nine or 10 on the GreatSchools.org 10-point scale against all other homes, as well as homes in lower rated districts.
The analysis shows homes within the boundaries of the higher rated public school districts are, on average, 49 percent more expensive – at $400,000 – than the national median list price of $269,000 and 77 percent more expensive than schools located within the boundaries of lower ranked districts with a median of $225,000. Houses located in these areas, on average, also move eight days faster than homes in below average school districts and sell four days faster – at 58 days – than the national median of 62 days.
For many years now, Ridgefield Public School District, as well as the individual schools, have ranked well in numerous reports issued annually. Last week we reported on Ridgefield High School superior ranking in Newsweek’s annual America’s Top High Schools list for 2016. Most recently, the 2016 Best School Districts by Niche.com ranked Ridgefield School District number eight in Connecticut and 58th Nationally. The Niche.com ranking provides a comprehensive assessment of the overall experience of a school district and takes into account key factors such as the strength of academics, quality of teachers, school resources, the quality of student life, as well as student and parent reviews, in an attempt to measure the overall excellence of the district. The final ranking results in 10,488 districts receiving a numerical ranking.
