Don’t Have Kids? Don’t Want Kids? Don’t Even Like Them?
The thing is, kids or no kids, schools need to be on your radar when buying or selling.
What are your memories from Kindergarten? Playing in the sandbox, maybe your first crush, your first sleepover at a friend’s house, and who can forget Doug – glue eating champion. For many school boards, Kindergarten registration took place the past couple of months, and while Kindergarten is a simple time for kids, it tends to send many parents into a frenzy questioning whether they are sending their kids down the right path. It may surprise some people to know that this decision on where to send kids to school actually has a huge impact on people’s real estate choices.
It’s not uncommon to see a home on one side of the street sell for 10% higher than the other simply because it falls into a different school boundary. If you aren’t paying attention, you could end up over paying to be on the wrong side of the street, or undervaluing your property because you failed to consider school boundaries.
Schools are a major factor in many people’s minds when deciding when and where to buy or sell, and if you aren’t thinking about it, you should be. Take my friends Jeff and Nish for instance, they purchased their first home about 8 years ago prior to having 2 adorable little girls, one of whom will be starting kindergarten for the first time this fall. At the time they purchased (unfortunately for them with a different Broker, pffft), school quality wasn’t on the radar. Little did they know that if they purchased one block East, they would have bought in a better school district. Not a big deal right? 8 years is a long time in one house, maybe it’s time for a move anyway. As someone who makes my living off people moving, I’d like to say no big deal, but moving is a big deal. Whenever possible I encourage my clients to purchase for the long term because moving is expensive and a hassle. Land transfer taxes, legal fees, marketing and realtor fees, and moving costs add up to tens of thousands of dollars. Nish has taken to writing pleading letters with the principal at the better school district to allow them to enter, but they are now on the hunt for a new home in a better quality school district.
Maybe you are of the notion that school quality will change for the better as the neighbourhood does. My wife and I fall into this category; we did think about schools, a lot, but decided to hope for the best. We bought on a street where every second house has 2 kids under the age of 6. Frankly, if you don’t have a 3-6 year old and a baby or at least the intention to have one, you will feel like the odd man out on Woodfield (that’s what us wannabe cool parents tell ourselves anyway). We bought in Leslieville with our 1 year old daughter in the Duke of Connaught school district (one of the worst ranked schools in Ontario). We knew about the poor school quality and anticipated positive changes in the school, a reflection of the positive changes happening in the neighbourhood. After all, our neighbourhood’s income levels are increasing, we have a limited number of rental properties in the area, and many of the homes that fall into Duke’s boundaries are suitable for growing families; three correlations that generally lead to better rankings in school quality. While house values have increased above the city average, we have yet to see a change in school quality, sigh.
The challenge we are seeing is that families in our school district are apprehensive to send their kids to such a poorly ranked school and start to look at other options. Some neighbours are considering private school, which means spending an additional $1,600 a month per child, other people will skirt the system by using a relatives’ or a rental property address to get them into a better district. We have considered other options ourselves. Part of the reason my wife and I sent our kids to an all French daycare was so that we had an alternative plan in place, allowing us to send our kids to a well ranked French school in the area, instead of our not-so-highly ranked home school. It doesn’t matter how many amazing people you have in your neighbourhood, if you don’t buy in and commit to change, it’s not going to happen. We love our community and continue to see our neighbourhood grow, improve and appreciate. But if we ever want to see home values catch or pass other top-ranked neighbourhoods, a better ranked elementary school seems to be a missing part of the equation. And yes, school rankings are just a small measure in determining what makes a great school, but it’s often the only measurement rushed home buyers consider.
We have decided to be part of the change to improve our local school and hope others join. For us, the benefit to higher school rankings is more about our children obtaining a better education, but better rankings will benefit the community as a whole, and whether you have kids or not, it will lead to higher appreciation in home values. So kids or no kids, when you go to buy or sell your next home, make sure you give proper consideration to the school district.
