ForRent.com now lets users hunt for apartments by individual school attendance zones or neighborhood.
Users see a list of neighborhoods and schools on the left-hand side of the search results page. After performing a search by city, state or ZIP code, a schools tab populates alphabetically with pertinent school data.
Integration of the neighborhood and schools search filters “makes it easier for people to search for homes based on what is most important to them, such as education,” the company said. “As for our customers, these features ultimately create a platform for increased consumer engagement, driving more traffic and leads.”
Many property search websites, including Zillow, Trulia and realtor.com, offer the ability to search for homes served by a particular school.
This week realtor.com said an analysis of user behavior found homebuyers researching schools are most likely to be interested in elementary schools, an indicator that most people who research schools either have young children or expect to start a family when they buy their next home. Realtor.com also found that 52 percent of millennials born between 1980 and 2000 said the wrong school district could be a deal breaker, compared with 31 percent of all buyers.
The availability of test scores and ratings for individual schools on real estate search sites has raised concerns that neighborhoods could become more stratified by income and race.
