What Impact Does The School District Have On Home Prices and Sales?

The question in my headline is one of those questions that in the real estate community, and with most homeowners, would elicit a response something like “the quality of the school district has a major impact on the housing market, duh!”.  While I don’t think anyone would argue that having quality public education available to everyone in all areas is important, I’m just talking data here and looking at it from the real estate perspective.  So, with that in mind, I decided to use one of the reports produced by proprietary software created by MORE, REALTORS® and based upon MLS home sales and price data, to compare home prices and sales in two of the best St Louis area public school districts to two of the worst (at least according to many lists of best and worst schools out there) to see how they compare.

For two of the best districts, I chose Clayton and Kirkwood and for two fo the worst, I chose Riverview Gardens and the City of St Louis.  The results were interesting and, somewhat surprising perhaps.  The reports below have all the data, but here is a summary of the comparison:

  • Home sales for the most recent 12-month period vs the prior 12-month period were up slightly (0.20%) in Riverview/St Louis districts and were down 15.66% for Clayton/Kirkwood.
  • Home prices for the same period increased by 5.36% in Riverview/St Louis and by 2.41% for Clayton/Kirkwood
  • Listing inventory for Riverview/St Louis districts is at 2.31 months and for Clayton/Kirkwood is at 2.49 months.

By the way, if you would like to see reports like this for any St Louis area school district, county, zip or city, contact me and I’ll be happy to send it to you.

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