Effect on Assessment

• A property's taxable value is determined by a local assessor whose job is to estimate how much one property is worth compared to others in similar neighborhoods. To calculate this number, called an assessment, most officials consider physical features of the property, like its size and general condition. But they also weigh its market value, meaning the amount buyers are likely to pay for it. When a property's school zoning changes, this can have a positive or negative effect on its market value: positive if local children will now attend a better school, negative if they are being shifted to a lower quality school.
  
  

Effect on Tax Levy

• When a property is moved from one school zone to another, it is usually because the previous distribution of students was unbalanced or inequitable. For example, a fast-growing neighborhood's school may be overcrowded while an older part of town has too few children to fill classes. Changing this distribution often incurs new costs, like adding bus routes or hiring more teachers. These costs may drive up the local tax levy, forcing all residents to pay more and making their properties less valuable on the regional real estate market.
  
  

Challenging an Assessment

• Sometimes a property's school zoning change causes its assessment to increase or decrease so much that the owner believes the calculation is incorrect or unfair. In that case, he has the right to file an appeal. Different communities have their own procedural rules, but the general approach is to show evidence of some inaccuracy. For example, an assessor may have overlooked that many students in the neighborhood attend private schools and will be unaffected by the zoning change.
  
  

Mitigating Factors

• A community's demographic profile can mitigate, or offset, the effects of a school zoning change. In particular, property values in a neighborhood with a high proportion of active adult or senior citizen housing will generally experience less of an impact than values in a neighborhood of young families. Also, very affluent communities tend to have high quality schools across the board, reducing the likelihood that a zoning change will make homes in one part of town more valuable than in another.