What’s the value of excellent primary and high school education in Australia?
It’s not priceless but it’s definitely worth something and can be kind of expensive.
Eligibility for children to attend state schools in Australia is determined on a preferential basis with residents of a ‘catchment area’ being the first priority. These catchment areas have become increasingly important over the years as buyers with more money and more options target the catchment areas with the best academic reputations.
The highly ranked school catchments have upwards pressure being placed on them for prices and also are in higher demand from tenants for the same reasons.
Buyers will pay a premium for being in a desired catchment. This can easily be worth 50k and higher if your property is in the desired catchment and not one roof outside it.
The ranking of schools is closely watched and parents are often prepared to go to extreme measures in an attempt to qualify for admission to a valued school. Methods including stretching the truth about where they are residing and camping out overnight in an attempt to get in on a ‘first in’ basis for out of catchment admissions.
Because school catchments play an important role in property values it’s one of the items we are always checking for each property.
Just like essential items such as flooding, zoning, lot size etc form part of a property research checklist, School catchments have become a part of the conversation when evaluating the prospects of target property.
