Post written by Marta Navales
Hi all!
I hope you all had a wonderful start of the year and that you are ready to face a fabulous 2020!
After my first article, where we briefly mentioned the importance of location when looking for a home, someone approached me to ask if we could talk a bit more in detail about how to target homes depending on finding good schools nearby.
This was an excellent request of great importance and I decided to write an article on it, in case some of you have the same doubts.
I must start by saying that we need to keep it general because what you could consider a good school could depend on many factors. Some of these factors could be what your objectives for your kids’ education are, your budget, distances, facilities for transportation, etc. But I will try to give some general guidelines.
According to recent school reports some areas known to have better high schools are: Arcadia, San Marino, South Pasadena, Temple City, La Cañada, or La Crescenta, for instance.
As for primary schools, there is much more variety, and well-rated and reputable schools can be found in many more locations.
Again, this is very general and we would have to take into account different factors in order to find the perfect school, and therefore the perfect location for your home.
A factor worth taking into account as well is housing values: in places where well-rated schools are located, houses are valued at a 10-20% higher rate than other places with not so well reputed schools. So you might end up paying more for them. On the other hand, you would be sitting on a much more valuable asset.
Moving into a more affordable area, which also allows you to pay less in taxes (because this is California and we always need to take taxes into consideration), would give you more margin to afford a private school, for instance. There are many options.
In order to access this information and know how the schools are rated, I would recommend calling local school districts or checking online reports, and then drawing your own conclusions.
This is a very general approach that can apply to everyone. This can give you a research starting point.
However, there are ways to get more refined details for each specific case. If you are at this point, thinking of moving forward, and find this an issue, please don’t hesitate to contact me and we can get a more accurate analysis going.
Hope this was helpful.
Marta
PS. Today, interest rates have gone down to about 3.3% for 15-year mortgages and 3.7% for 30-years. This is the lowest rates we’ve had in a very long time.
Keep enjoying the beautiful weather in the lovely and sunny California!!
Via Pasadena 