Assistant Professor Katy Rouse co-authored a new report that found a small price premium for residential real estate in Wake County, North Carolina, when children attend schools that teach from late August through mid June.
“The Effect of Multi-Track Year-Round Academic Calendars on Property Values: Evidence from district imposed school calendar conversions” by Elon University Assistant Professor Katy Rouse and Brooks Depro, a senior economist at RTI and an adjunct assistant professor of economics at Elon, is now online and appears in print in the December edition of Economics of Education Review.
Homeowners may a have a preference or distaste for year-round calendars for a variety of reasons, ranging from perceived academic effects to family home and work life disruptions, the authors write. If households favor one school calendar relative to another, they may have to pay an additional amount to move to a house with a different calendar.
The implications for local communities can be immense, the researchers conclude in their study.
“If year-round schools are seen as an undesirable attribute and home prices fall, some of the potential cost savings associated with the year-round school calendar may be offset by a lowered tax revenue base,” Rouse said. “For this study, we wanted to move beyond observing how average test scores among schools impact the housing market and explore whether other school attributes are capitalized into home prices.”
In Wake County, which includes the state capital of Raleigh, multi-track, year-round schools increased significantly in the past decade due to a high-level of growth in the school district. In multi-track year-round calendar schools, schools are able to support a larger student population by rotating breaks for students in different tracks.
Increasing existing school capacity is often perceived as a low-cost way to meet student population growth. The largest increase in Wake County occurred in 2007 when the school system mandated 22 traditional calendar schools to switch to a multi-track year-round schedule.
“Given the media attention and strong public opinions on the school calendar change, it is evident that Wake parents have strong preferences regarding school calendars,” Depro said. “The puzzle we tried to solve was whether a traditional calendar ‘price premium’ emerged immediately after the mandatory calendar conversions. To answer the question, our study design compares and contrasts actual home sales that took place before and after the conversion.”
The economic effects of year-round schools have been a research interest of Rouse’s since she started teaching at Elon University in 2009. Rouse received the 2012 Martha and Spencer Love School of Business Dean’s Award for Excellence in Scholarship, and the 2014 Martha and Spencer Love School of Business Dean’s Award for Excellence in Teaching.
Rouse earned her doctorate in economics in 2009 from the University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill.
RTI International is one of the world’s leading research institutes, dedicated to improving the human condition “by turning knowledge into practice.” More than 3,700 staffers provide research and technical services to governments and businesses in more than 75 countries in the areas of health and pharmaceuticals, education and training, surveys and statistics, advanced technology, international development, economic and social policy, energy and the environment, and laboratory testing and chemical analysis.