Back to School - a lesson in Guildford property buying

Some parents came to see me because they were concerned about where they should live in Guildford to ensure their son and daughter could receive the best primary school education possible but also the most affordable property. 

They were well researched having located the website www.schoolguide.co.uk to compare school results but were not familiar with the area so I suggested they pick two schools, one on either side of town to compare house prices, rentals (should they require somewhere temporary while they settled into the area before making a decision on where to buy) and capital growth.

They selected two state schools out of the 60 listed on the website for Guildford, Woking and surrounding villages. These were Queen Eleanor's Church of England School, in Onslow Village and Bushy Hill Junior School, in Merrow.  

Queen Eleanor 's School was rated 9th out of 60, with a 4 star grading confirming that it was a good school, while Bushy Hill School was rated 30th, with a 2 star rating suggesting some improvement was required. 

The catchment areas for these two schools were relatively small so the parents could consider the prices, specific sizes, styles and locations in some detail and most importantly what would be available within their budget of £500,000.

Housing in the catchment area to Queen Eleanor's School has the advantage of being located closer to the mainline station and town centre so is popular with parents working in town, or commuting up to London and down towards Portsmouth. The area includes Onslow Village which has a parade of shops and a village hall to support the local community. 

Our research discovered that  the average price for a property in this area was £500,000 exactly. This amount would afford a 3 bedroom detached house in Beech Grove, on the Ashendon Estate, approximately 15 minutes walk to the school and 10 minutes walk to the Tesco supermarket, hospital, Surrey Research Park and University campus.

3 bed detached in Beech Grove, Ashenden Estate

When repeating the same exercise for the Bushy Hill School catchment area I advised the parents that while Merrow Village was two miles from Guildford town centre it was on the edge of Merrow Downs and Clandon Park, providing green space in which to walk, run 
and cycle plus there was a busy parade of shops, doctor surgery and sports facilities in the village. 

The average property price in this area was higher at £635,000 but when looking for a house priced close to the parent's budget, we found a 3 bedroom semi detached house for the asking price of £519,950 in Burpham, about a mile from Merrow and the school.

3 bed semi-detached in Burpham

Market rental prices were then studied. The average rental for a 3 bedroom property in the Queen Eleanor's catchment area was £1,650. There is currently a 3 bedroom Victorian semi-detached house on the market at this price, in Agraria Road, just 10 minutes from the railway station. The average rental for a similar property in the Bushy Hill School catchment area was £1,425. An example of this was a 3 bed terraced property in Gilliat Drive, on the Merrow Park development adjacent to the school.

It therefore appears to be a little cheaper to rent in the Bushy Hill School catchment area but fractionally more to buy in this area.

As the parents were not investing in property but buying for their own use, they had no interest in yields, so this left the final consideration "what capital growth could they expect in years to come?" 

I advised them that the only way to answer this question was to consider the capital growth experienced in the past to help provide a guide for the future. The average property price for a house, in the Queen Eleanor's School catchment area in 2001 was £227,200 and in the Bushy Hill School catchment area the respective figure was £343,200. 

This confirms that while the price of property located in the Queen Eleanor's School catchment area is typically lower than in the Bushy Hill School catchment area, it has in fact grown faster, by a factor of 20%.

Whether this trend will continue is not known but as average house asking prices in Queen Eleanor's School catchment area were up to £100,000 less than in the Bushy Hill School catchment area, this might suggest that this rate of price increase could continue for some years to come until the disparity is reduced.

This means that the likelihood that lower cost housing is likely to be located around a lower ranked school is not always the case.

Our research has shown that not only will Queen Eleanor's Junior School deliver a superior education for the parent's son and daughter but a potentially more affordable house purchase too. Furthermore the area could have the potential for greater capital growth than the Bushy Hill School catchment area.