The attraction of school catchments

We can define the school catchment area as the geographical location where a state school’s core intake of students must live. In both Australia and New Zealand, zoning applies to state-funded or public schools and basically indicates which schools a child can attend based on residential address.

Proof of residency, such as council rates notice, utility bill, driver’s licence or a statutory declaration of residence from a licensed real estate agent is generally required.

School catchment boundaries are crucial to the government’s planning of education facilities, be that new schools, additional buildings or refurbishments.

Sometimes it is necessary for an education department to adjust school catchments to distribute student numbers among the local schools in line with demand and capacity. Schools can open and close with changes in population.

Many parents – and potential parents - will consider school zoning when deciding where to buy or rent, which also means this ‘location’ aspect is important to all property investors.

Homes near top-performing schools may command a premium over comparable properties outside the zone and they might be a stronger rental proposition too.

Investors should research popular school catchment areas and suburbs surrounding high quality schools because there’s likely to be higher demand for properties in such locations, especially from tenants of certain demographics.

Also consider the type of property that would suit potential tenants - families with school age children – including apartments and townhouse complexes which are maintenance free, are of a family-friendly design and offer safe and convenient play areas and recreational facilities.

Keep an eye on the high-quality schools because the property developers generally do when it comes to their planning.

You may have noticed that many real estate websites feature school catchments in their description of properties and searches.

It is widely accepted that wellregarded, well-performing public schools have an effect on house price growth in an area, and when parents feel that private school fees are out of their reach, it is certainly the public schools with the best reputation that they will turn to. According to one real estate institute at the start of this year, homes in the designated neighbourhood of a capital city’s popular public primary and secondary schools secured sale prices of up to $412,500 more than those just outside the zone.

In February this year, when the Australian government announced a change to zoning, agents suggested that property prices were likely to fall in suburbs moved out of the zones for two of Adelaide’s most soughtafter schools.

So it seems that homes within some school catchment areas are hot property, and that access to soughtafter public schools is a major factor for buyers with school-aged children.

Interestingly, it appears that a location within a sought-after public primary school zone is even more desirable than for a high school zone given the trend to target public primary school education followed by private secondary years.

As you would expect, homes within the catchment areas of popular schools are tightly held.

In a different take on the relationship between property and schools, property developers in Kew, Victoria, have offered three years of private school fees – worth around $100,000 - to entice townhouse buyers. The developers identified five leading private schools in the vicinity of the 25 townhouse-four penthouse project.