Many parents and would-be parents are willing to make sacrifices to live in top-rated school areas such as West Vancouver, which has 20 of Metro Vancouver's 25 highest-ranking communities for school scores.Tijana Martin/The Globe and Mail
Ten years ago, Toronto realtor Sean Mayers says, homebuyers often opened discussions by asking about commute times.
“Now, the first question they ask me is, ‘What’s the school like?’”
Mr. Mayers has watched parents and would-be parents increasingly pay more for smaller, older homes in their desired school catchment. “Same bricks, same square footage, but one side of an invisible line is worth six figures more.”
Ilan Portnoi, who also sells homes in Toronto, said he’s started noticing homebuyers stretching their dollar even further and earlier in life to secure housing in a well-rated district.
“They’re often going to the very max of their budget,” he said – sometimes before even having children. “People in the last few years are getting stuck, so clients who don’t even have kids yet ask a lot more questions about the schools.”
Private school enrolment keeps climbing as parents look to give their kids an edge
The decline of the starter home, combined with worsening learning outcomes for Canadian students in the public school system, are making school ratings more important for a growing cohort of homebuyers, some realtors say. Many parents and would-be parents are willing to make sacrifices to live in a top-rated school area, sometimes adding tens or hundreds of thousands of dollars to their purchase price.
Standardized test scores in reading, science and math have been dropping across the country. In British Columbia, around one-third of students were not meeting literacy expectations just prior to the pandemic, with that number rising to 40 per cent from 2021-22 onward. In Ontario, just half of Grade 6 students met provincial standards in math in 2024-25, according to the province’s Education Quality and Accountability Office. Twenty years ago, that figure was 60 per cent.
Performance on provincial assessments is largely what underpins official school scores, which in Canada have been dominated by the Fraser Institute’s annual ratings. The institute looks at standardized test scores, along with factors such as gaps in performance between girls and boys, and whether a school improved or declined over a given period.
Parents are paying consultants thousands to help get their kids into top universities
The Globe and Mail analyzed data from real estate company HouseSigma and Fraser ratings, and found that living near the 30 top-rated public schools in the Greater Toronto Area commands a median premium of roughly $60,000 to $70,000, or the equivalent of about 5 per cent to 7 per cent for detached homes and 4 per cent to 6 per cent for attached homes. In B.C., this premium can be even higher, reaching up to a median premium of about 10.5 per cent.
Though top-scoring public schools in the GTA aren’t in the priciest parts of central Toronto – instead clustering predominantly in the Markham and Richmond Hill suburbs – the price tags of homes in those areas consistently exceed the municipal median.
Eleven of the 20 top-ranked neighbourhoods for school scores are situated in Markham. Virtually all of them command a significant premium over the northeast Toronto suburb’s overall municipal median price of $1.5-million for detached homes and $1.04-million for attached homes, going up as much as 10 per cent for an attached home in Middlefield and often even higher – for example, in the newer, family-oriented Victoria Manor-Jennings Gate neighbourhood.
Notably, some of the most expensive real estate markets in central Toronto and North York carry middling-to-low school scores.
While Casa Loma is the second most expensive Toronto community for detached homes at a median price of $4-million, it has a school score of 4.5 out of 10. Yonge and St. Clair, Rosedale-Moore Park and the Annex are all among the top 10 most expensive Toronto neighbourhoods. Their school scores range between 4.55 and 5.15. Bedford Park-Nortown, the eighth most expensive neighbourhood, has a school score of just 2.55.
The reason for this is likely that the wealthiest homeowners overwhelmingly enroll their kids in private schools, Mr. Portnoi said. “In a super affluent neighbourhood, the price is not reflected in school rankings.”
That said, a few communities report both premium home prices and higher school scores. For example, Bridle Path-Sunnybrook-York Mills is the most expensive neighbourhood in Toronto, with a median detached home price of $4.6-million and a school score of 8.05.
In Metro Vancouver, school scores and home prices are more in sync than in the GTA.
Twenty of the region’s 25 highest-ranking communities for school scores are in West Vancouver. British Properties, a residential neighbourhood within the municipality, boasts a score of 9.3 and the second-highest median price for a detached home at $4.28-million.
As with the GTA, some exceptions crop up for ultra-affluent Vancouver neighbourhoods. Shaughnessy, the most expensive detached market in the region with a median home price of $5.13-million, doesn’t come close to cracking the top 10 list for schools, with a score of 7.65.
One caveat in the data is that West Vancouver’s top-school enclaves are small and have fewer transactions, according to HouseSigma. So pinning down the exact premium can be hard, particularly for some housing types.
But when it comes to larger, rankable communities in West Vancouver, Richmond and North Vancouver, higher scores and higher prices track each other closely, with the median premium for a detached home near a highly rated school hovering at $250,000.
Beyond a home’s sale price, those who move near a top-rated institution should also be prepared for higher property taxes.
Mineola West in Mississauga is just a two-to-five minute drive from Mineola East, but home to one of the top-rated schools in Ontario. A typical home in Mineola East might run $1.8- to $2-million with property taxes around $10,000, while a comparable-sized home in Mineola West will have property taxes closer to $18,000-$20,000, said real estate agent Marissa Jochim, who specializes in that area.
In some neighbourhoods, higher incomes make it harder to isolate school score premiums from factors that may correlate with them and thereby affect prices, such as sales turnover or safety.
And sometimes a “perceived ranking” can also affect the numbers, Mr. Mayers said.
“If enough parents believe a catchment area gives their kid an edge, the market prices [in] that belief, whether or not the data backs it up,” he explained.
