Schools are a contributing factor for anyone buying a home. Even if you donʼt have kids yourself, your next buyer might, and they might base their decision to buy on the school district which serves your home.
The question remains: How do you evaluate schools? Whatʼs the best approach for understanding if your local schools will score your property an “A” or relegate it to the land of “D-”? Luckily, there are some excellent resources out there for vetting schools online. Here are a few Iʼve come across which provide a good place to start:
- In Connecticut, every single school and every school district must complete a "Strategic School Profile" each year. What I like about these is that the format is the same for every school and every district, so you get to compare apples to apples. There's lots of good information in the reports-- everything from test scores and demographics to resources and expenditures (each report is about 8 pages).
- Education.com: A major portal site for education everywhere, youʼll want to pay particular attention to the schools section,
- GreatSchools.org: A good search engine for researching schools, you can do zip code based searches and learn lots about the public and private institutions in the area.
- ProjectAppleseed.org: A website dedicated to improving public schools, you can learn a lot here about the crucial elements of what makes a local school and excellent local school.
Finally, here are a handful of questions to ask yourself if youʼre doing research:
How comprehensive is the schoolʼs safety policy? What social/support services are available at the school? How does the school handle discipline? Are people involved in a parent/teacher organization? How healthy is the school districtʼs annual report?
Good research is important when making an investment in a home. Contact me for more local resources-- from mortgage providers to home inspectors to insurance experts or local handy persons-- I'm here to help!
Comments(0)