California Real Estate : Schools

This is installment number two of California Real Estate.

Obviously the school district is an important factor in buying a house. So how do you figure out the district the house you are looking at belongs to and if it is any good?

Some counties have sites that take information about the property and tell you the district information. Here's an example of from Santa Clara County. Just type in the address of the property and it provides the elementary and high school districts. Of course, if you are serious about putting an offer down, you should call the district and make sure that the information on the website is accurate and when the last time they redrew district lines to get a gauge on the stability of the district mapping.

To see how good the district is, I use this site. Select a state, and you can search by district, school name, or property address. Navigate the links until you get to the school you are interested in. Then I find that clicking on "Compare This School" and then sorting by the various criteria that I care about is the best way to figure out how good the school is.

Good Luck!

Comments!

It's nice to get comments from my loyal readers! : ) Even though there are only a few of you, reading your comments are fun to read and they make me want to write more. So leave me more comments and thanks for reading!

California Real Estate : Prices

Hi,

I've gotten some questions/requests about this, so here's a site that I use to get information on housing prices in California. It's called California Moves and although it's run by Coldwell Banker, it has listings from all realtors. Of course, it's asking prices not final transaction prices, but I think it's a reasonable first approximation if you just want to get a rough idea of what the market is doing.

The site should be self-explanatory, but for me the most useful way to get data is:

• Click on Property Search (not on Open Home Search)
  
• Select a county in either northern or southern california and click 'submit'
  
• Then you can either select all cities, one city, or a part of one city and click 'Search'
  
• Finally, enter your own criteria for price, rooms, zip code, etc. Or enter nothing and just hit 'Search Now' to get all the properties sorted by price.
  

Some of the listings have more information than others, with the ones going all out having virtual tours that you can click on. Some don't even have pictures.

Then again, sometimes I just stay on the main page, watch the pictures scroll through, and click on ones that catch my eye. Most of those houses I'll never see the inside of : ). Happy Hunting!