Home prices in Beaverton are following school report cards!

We send our kids to the local parochial schools.  The public schools in Saint Charles used to be tops in the state.  Now they're in the bottom after our town grew too fast and has a history of school administrative nightmares.

Todd - I too help a lot of families in my area and schools are always at the very top of their list.  Thankfully Wellington FL has some of the best schools in the County.

Schools are a huge factor... ex: I bought a home (nice one to). It was in my old neighborhood, which I was fond of. The home was built by a good friend of the family and my Grandfather. All very wonderful and emotional reasons to purchase.

What I didn't get, and I didn't research, and no one told me... was this area was now in transition and the city did a lot of rezoning to create a high density area. We lived there for a couple of years when a huge apartment development was built next door. Then a couple of the buildings in the apartment complex went section 8 and the kids were starting school. All of which very quickly turned into a disaster. Our wonderful little neighborhood went to hell in nothing flat.

Having learned my lessons well, I did some serious homework, we sold and moved our family to Issaquah, WA... fabulous school district!!! And when you got to know the parents you'd find that many of them moved there for that #1 reason... the schools.

Desert Hills High School has gained national attention in our area for being a state-of-the-art school and the area is very much desired by homebuyers with students for those very reasons Todd!

Schools continue to be very important for those who send their kids to public schools.  I am seeing a growing trend of home schoolers though, allowing the family to live exactly where they want to.  When I work with clients with kids and they say "school district doesn't matter" it sure widens the net.

The quality of the schools here doesn't seem to make a difference as far as whether prices in the neighborhoods rise or fall. However, the best neighborhoods have the best schools and the highest prices. I'm sure there's a correlation there somewhere.

Many of our areas here have been moving up in number of sales and prices for 24 consecutive months now. My farming area increased 40% - $90,000 - from March to April 2010, numbers that were last seen in 2002 and 2003, and numbers which cannot be sustained.

Todd, good school districts are an important factor in a home search for families with growing children.

Todd, 2 of my primary market areas in RI have consistently had top rated schools based upon testing scores and those 2 towns seem to maintain a more stable price with home sales.  Buyers definitely look for it when they are buying with children and they are moving down from the cities.  We have many charter schools in RI which are now competing with the home schooling (which is not as prevalent here), parochial schools & private schools.