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Realtors attest to school's role in drawing newcomers
By MARY EVA CASSADA
Special to The News & Record
Local realtors say schools do indeed have an impact on the housing
market – if not precisely in the way described by Halifax Mayor Leon
Plaster in making a case for keeping a conventional school in town.
Plaster, a retired industry executive, pointed out Monday that when
one
of his daughters moved to Florence, S.C., the first thing she did
was
research schools. Only then did her family go house-hunting. One of
the
points of opposition to the merger of Halifax into Sinai: People
expect
a school within their town, they contend.
Others say schools loom large for buyers, but not necessarily
immediate
proximity to them.
Honey Davis, a South Boston Realtor, said a school is the top
inquiry
young prospective buyers hit her with.
“It’s the first thing they ask before they even get the car door
closed,” Davis said.
The new elementaries under construction and the renovated middle
school, “give the right message” she said, and will be a recruiting
tool in wooing people to Halifax County.
Deborah Powell, a veteran realtor, said prospective residents are
turned off by older, ill-maintained schools. Their thoughts are:
“This
is not a progressive area because they’re not spending money on
schools,” she said.
The new Cluster Springs School – not even open yet – has for a year
now
generated requests for homes in that district, she said. South
Boston
Elementary has not had the same impact – at least not yet.
Louis Jennings of My Country Real Estate, himself 28-year veteran
educator first at Mary Bethune and then the Junior High, conceded
that
“new schools attract attention” but that young families he deals
with
are more focused on “a good track record as far as educating the
students … rather than a pretty school.”
Davis said she doesn’t use Halifax Public Schools’ lenient
out-of-zone
transfer policy as a selling point: That they can easily buy in one
district and send their children to school where they please.
“There’s no way I’m going to promise that to someone,” she said,
especially given that families must re-apply year to year.
Despite ample school data available online, few out-of-town
homebuyers
come armed with it, the three realtors said.
“I tell them to talk to people, visit the schools,” said Davis.
In many big cities around the country, the quality of schools
dictates
the real estate market.
Major newspapers’ weekend real estate listings boast of cathedral
ceilings, sunken tubs and … school districts.
In those areas, there’s no such thing as school choice (unless a
family
shoots for a public magnet school, or opts out into a private school
or
homeschooling). Everywhere, the Information Age brings school data
straight into a home computer so that residential decisions are made
long before a visit.
Take, for example, a young family transferring to Roanoke. Should
they
live in town or in the suburbs?
Log onto one of many websites, such as SchoolMatters, a service of
Standard & Poor’s. A quick look at Roanoke City schools shows they
are
63 percent economically disadvantaged and have a math and reading
proficiency of about 67 percent. Roanoke County, on the other hand,
has
only 14 percent economically disadvantaged. Eighty-six percent of
its
children are reading proficient and 90 pass standardized math tests.
The differences might strike a doting mom and dad as stark.
In the case of Halifax County, historic Halifax Elementary has the
toniest address – and neighboring Mountain Road homes worthy of
Southern Living magazine – but some Department of Education
statistics
that might give prospects pause: “Did Not Make AYP” in 2006-07; in
2005-06, an overall reading passing rate of 72 percent, an overall
math
passing rate of 71.
“School quality is the most important cause of the variation in
constant-quality house prices,” states a scholarly work from Ohio
State
University’s departments of economics and finance. “We find that a
measure of student achievement is very important in explaining …
variations in … house prices.”
It’s all enough to make a real estate agent change her tune from
“location, location, location” to “schools, schools, schools.”