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In Chester, Bucks and Montco bragging about school district pays

Our love of visually appealing infographics is well documented.  This time, real estate behemoth Trulia piqued our interest with a series on the impact local schools have on home searches by families with children.

Data wonks there pored over home listings between June 2014 and June 2015 in the 100 largest metro areas in the country. Within those findings they made note of properties where the word "school" was used positively within the listing description (they looked for words like "award winning," "excellent" and "distinguished," among others).  And yes, we might as well say right here that any listing mentioning schools is probably only doing so because it is advantageous.

Finally, they examined the relationship between "school" appearing in the listing and the price of the home. Then they came up with 10 areas where schools turned out to be a major selling point. Not surprisingly, Chester, Bucks and Montgomery Counties ranked high on the list (third, actually), with 22.5 percent of the listings in those areas mentioning "school" in the description.

While the economists at Trulia didn't find that "school" had a consistent correlation with the price of a home, they did offer one concrete finding for Bucks, Chester and Montco:

"In the very least, we can say that for the top three housing markets where schools are mentioned most, being able to highlight the home's proximity to schools added about 7 percent to the listing price in Montgomery-Bucks-Chester County," Trulia reported.

Read the full piece on Trulia.com/trends.

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