Houses close to good schools always sell well

hether you have children or not, purchasing a home near a desirable school district is always a smart investment decision.

Demand for homes within school catchment areas will always exist, which gives sellers in these areas reassurance they will be able to sell timeously and close to full value. Owing to entrance “requirements based on

Wproximity, many buyers with young families choose a suburb purely based on the schooling district they want to be in and will refuse to look at any properties that lie outside of these areas,” RE/MAX of Southern Africa regional director and CEO Adrian Goslett said.

For this reason,

“those who are looking for properties purely based upon investment value ought to consider properties within one of the catchment areas of a reputable schooling district, as the demand for these properties will always exist as long as the school maintains its reputation.”

To confirm this, broker/owner of RE/MAX Advantage in Rosebank, Johannesdburg, Frikkie van Eeden, said that despite a slowdown in the mid- to luxurysegment of the market (anything above R3m) in 2019, properties nearer top schools attracted the buyers. Anything within

“walking distance from Jan Cilliers [probably the most sought-after Afrikaans Primary School in Johannesburg] has been in great demand,” Van Eeden said.

He said the northern suburbs of Johannesburg were prime examples of desirable schooling districts. Blessed with a

“number of good schools, families and investors are flocking to these suburbs.”

For those in Durban, Shane Pearson, broker/ manager at RE/MAX Address in Hillcrest, said buyers were drawn to suburbs within the Upper Highway area, purely owing to the attraction of the top-quality private schools nearby.

In the Western Cape, Kevin Jacobs, broker/owner of RE/MAX Premier in Claremont, said there were many soughtafter private schools in the Claremont and Rondebosch areas. Our office, which

“is near to many soughtafter private schools, starts getting incredibly busy with this sort of buyer, usually around August or September. This tends to be

“the best time to find a home if you re hoping

’ to enrol your child in a new school for the following school year,” Jacobs said.

This is because many parents of children who are of school-going age will already own property and the process of selling can take anywhere between three to six months.

Thereafter, registering a sale at the Deeds Office can take around three months, meaning it can take about nine months before buyers can move into their new home.

Now is the perfect “time to start searching for a new home if you re hoping to move

’ in time for your child to be enrolled before the start of the 2021 school year.

The market also

“currently favours buyers, which means buyers can still manage to get a good deal if they find a new home during this period of slow house price growth,” Goslett said.

For more, visit www.remax.co.za.