I was having a chat with a Grantham property investor the
other day, when he asked if schools, especially primary schools, affected the
local property market in terms of demand from buyers and tenants to a property.
Anecdotally, I have always known this to
be true, a good school creates good demand and good demand does affect house
prices. So, I asked my colleagues on the
front line, who take the phone calls from people putting themselves on our
mailing list and they confirmed that most people cite location as their number
one factor.
After looking through our mailing list, it confirms there is
a close correlation between the high demand areas of Grantham and the close
proximity to a good primary school. Talking
to my team in a recent morning meeting, they agreed many people would look to increase their budget quite
significantly, whilst others would consider downgrading their property requirements
to be close to a good primary school.
Those of you
who regularly read this blog will know I like a challenge, so I decided to look
at the science behind these assumptions. One of the more popular primary schools in
Grantham is Gonerby Hill Foot Church of England Primary School. According to the SchoolGuide website, its
figures are certainly impressive. Their last Ofsted Report classified it as Good,
77% of 11-year pupils achieving Level 4 or above in maths, reading and writing
whilst 25% of them achieved level 5. Finally,
the schools’ KS2 rating was classed as Good.
Looking at property sales within half a mile of Gonerby Hill
Foot, property values have risen in value since 2000 by 124.16%, whilst according
to recent figures, the Grantham average as a whole has
risen in the same time frame by 109.66%.
That means the parents of Gonerby Hill Foot have seen the values of their properties rise proportionally 13.22% more than the Grantham average ... interesting don’t you think?
However,
whilst a good primary school significantly contributes more to house prices,
the same can’t be said for secondary schools. There are two reasons for this,
firstly, as secondary schools are much larger, so their catchment areas are correspondingly
much larger, meaning parents don’t need to live so close to the school. Secondly,
in the UK, whilst the difference between the top 25% and bottom 25% of
secondary schools is not insignificant, in the primary school sector, the difference
between the top 25% and bottom 25%, according to the London School of
Economics, is considerably and significantly more.
