As an active buyers agent, I hold a minimum of 50 open houses a year — most of them in Almaden Valley, where I happen to live.

The vast majority of the hundreds of potential home buyers who come through these houses are looking in Almaden specifically for the excellent public schools. Now, Almaden has four absolute powerhouse elementary schools, each with an API test score well into the 900s and a slew of parents who’ll vouch for its academics; not much to choose from there.

But where buyers do discriminate is between Almaden’s two (also excellent) middle schools: Castillero, a performing-and-visual-arts magnet school, and Bret Harte, which sits adjacent to the equally reputable Leland High School. Most of these would-be buyers make no bones about it: They want their kid in Bret Harte, which boasts a far higher API score.

MLS statistics show me that the average price of a Castillero-served home that has changed hands in 2010 is a little more than $891,000. For Bret Harte homes, that figure is quite a bit higher: just over $1.04 million. Now stay with me:

Castillero’s 2010 API is 806. If I were to simply divide that number into the average sale price for a Castillero home, I’d say buyers value each API point at $1,106. Performing the same math for Bret Harte, I’d come upwith $1,145 per API point. Honestly, however, this equation so oversimplifies reality that the exercise falls into the category of “damn lies and statistics.” The numbers are, essentially, meaningless.

Use available MLS figures in a more discerning way, however, and I believe you can mine some very enlightening and useful information. To wit:

So far this year, Castillero-served homes that have closed escrow since Feb. 1 have brought $397 per square foot. Bret Harte-served homes have brought $434 p.s.f. during the same time frame. That’s a difference of $37 a square foot. The difference in API scores between the two schools is 103 points. This tells me that people who’ve actually put their money down this year to buy a home in Almaden Valley have, rightly or wrongly, placed a value of $2.78 per square foot for each API point that separates the two middle schools.

These numbers bear the ring of truth.

Whether I’m selling or buying a home in Almaden Valley, I am not well-served to simply ignore this. For instance, if I want to live in Almaden Valley and I have no kids in school — or I simply understand that Castillero is an excellent school in its own right and that its test scores might not paint the full picture for an arts-magnet school — then I definitely want to consider buying a home in the Castillero attendance area, because there’s a good chance I’ll be able to get essentially the same home for $150,000 less.

Congratulations to those of you who have just completed this course in Almaden Valley Real Estate Statistics 101: You’re now armed with information that 99 percent of your competing buyers and sellers don’t have (unless, of course, they’re represented by me.)

Tags: Almaden schools, Almaden Valley Real Estate, Buying a Home in Almaden Valley, Buying a Home in San Jose, San Jose Homes

Posted on Friday, December 17th, 2010 at 7:29 pm and is filed under Almaden Valley, Housing Market. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.