Minneapolis Star Tribune Homes Section
October 2005
--reprint rights available two weeks after publication
By JASON AMUNDSEN
Special to the Star Tribune
Before Frank and Jill Roffers moved from their south Minneapolis
home this year, they embarked on a targeted search. The main
criterion: excellent schools for their children, aged 2 and 3. They
found that, plus a house they liked, in Edina.
"We ended up paying a premium for the things that are important
to us," said Jill Roffers.Families like the Roffers are discovering
an unwritten law of residential real state: the better the school
district, the higher the home prices.
"The old real estate law was 'location, location, location'....One
might change it to be 'schools, schools, schools,'" said David
Weimer, Professor of Public Affairs at the University of Wisconsin-
Madison who has studied the correlation between home prices
and school performance. hether it's school quality that drives
home values or home values that drive school quality is subject to
debate.
Minneapolis Star Tribune Homes Section
July 2005
--reprint rights available two weeks after publication
By Jason Amundsen
Special to the Star Tribune
With median home sale prices in the Twin Cities at a quarter of a
million dollars and rising, more people are finding that the only
homes they can afford are in neighborhoods that are a little
rougher around the edges.
Yet a surprising number of home buyers don't do any research
into crime before signing on the dotted line. You don't want to
prematurely rule out what might be a livable and affordable area
just because it has a vaguely unsavory reputation. Nor do you
want to find out after moving in that a convicted sex offender lives
across the street.
So how do you figure out how much or what type of criminal
activity actually occurs in a neighborhood? Talk to the police and
to the neighbors, experts say.
