Want Little Johnny To Go To A Great School? Prepare To Plunk Down Some Serious Cash!

Kevin Boer, Broker Owner, 3 Oceans Real Estate, Inc. ()

June 19th, 2007 · 2 Comments

The Tuesday edition of the New York Times had an interesting article on the impact of school quality on home prices (note: article may disappear behind a paid firewall shortly.)

A study commissioned by Trinity College looked at the impact of school quality — as measured by test performance — on home prices in West Hartford, CT. (Please ask Athol Kay for the correct pronunciation. Hint: I believe the “r” is silent.)

The study found that a 12-percentage-point advantage in test scores on the Connecticut Mastery Tests corresponded to a $5065 increase in home prices. Our friends at Trulia note that average home prices in West Hartford are around $320K, so the $5065 delta corresponds to about a 1.6% increase in home prices.

I’ve been meaning to run a similar analysis for our market here in the Bay Area. Given the huge disparity in prices between, say, Palo Alto and Redwood City, I suspect home prices here are a lot more sensitive to school test scores.

Image courtesy of www.schoolsecurity.org

2 responses so far ↓

1 Buying A Home Guide » Blog Archive » Buying Dummy Home - Assessing Restaurants and Real Estate // Jun 19, 2007 at 9:05 am

[…] Want Little Johnny To Go To A Great School? Prepare To Plunk Down …Given the huge disparity in prices between, say, Palo Alto and Redwood City, I suspect home prices here are a lot more sensitive to school test scores. Image courtesy of http://www.schoolsecurity.org. Consumer, Industry, Real estate, … […]
2 Sock Puppet // Jun 19, 2007 at 2:17 pm

It’s pronounced Hart-ford.

I think you’re thinking of the Bore-ston accent. They may indeed call Hartford Hat-ford.

-Athol