School Districts

[James H.]

How important are school districts to you when shopping for rentals?

Also, rather than districts, how about individual schools? Districts here are huge. How do you determine if the schools assigned to the property address are any good? It seems individual opinions vary widely and I am not sure about the various sources I have found by googling..

[Chris Feltus]

Brian Hoyt

Great question. It depends on the type of investor I am shopping for. Some place higher priority on cash flow, while others are more interested in a buy and hold approach. When retail real estate values turn around individual school ratings are a critically important component.

To answer your question, yes I do take into account individual schools. Here in DFW you can determine the quality of the school from the database available from the Texas Education Agency here http://www.tea.state.tx.us/. It is important to look at the individual school ratings, because as you said, school districts can be very large each subdivision is assigned particular schools within the district. However, please note the TEA is changing their rating system entirely for 2013, and I am not sure what will replace it at this time.

I created map queried from the database to help pinpoint areas to invest for buy and hold investors. Since you are in Arlington, perhaps this will be of additional value to you.

E = Exemplary
R = Academically Recognized
A = Academically Acceptable
L = Academically unacceptable
X = Null Values (for example very small schools or private schools that are not rated)

Hopefully this will help generate some ideas and resources for you Brian.