St Thomas’s Catchment Area mean homeowners profit by £23,880

 

I was having a chat with a Canterbury 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 Canterbury 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.  According to the SchoolGuide website, St Thomas Catholic Primary School is one of the best primary schools in Canterbury.  Its figures are certainly impressive. Their last Ofsted Report classified it as Good, 100% of 11-year pupils achieving Level 4 or above in maths, reading and writing whilst 38% of them achieved level 5. Finally, the schools’ KS2 rating was classed as Excellent.

Looking at property sales within half a mile of St Thomas, property values have risen in value since 2000 by 122.22%, whilst according to recent figures, the Canterbury average as a whole has risen in the same time frame by 113.19%.

That means the parents of St Thomas have seen the values of their properties rise proportionally 7.98% more than the Canterbury average (that equates to £23,880 extra over the last 15 years for those local homeowners!)... 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.

Many other Canterbury landlords, both who are with us and many who are with other Canterbury agents, like to pop in for a coffee or ring/email us to discuss the Canterbury property market, to consider how Canterbury compares with its closest rivals and hopefully we can answer all their questions. You must take lots of advice and seek out the best opinion. One good source of opinion, specific to the Canterbury property market is the Canterbury Property Blog www.canterburypropertyblog.com . I don’t bite, I don’t do hard sell, and I will just give you my honest and straight talking opinion.