Century 21 has introduced search-by-school capability to its website, with tools that allow homebuyers to evaluate schools in the areas where they might want to live and then search for homes for sale within a specific school’s attendance boundary.
While listings often identify the school district a property is located in, finding out the specific schools that serve a particular home often involves additional research. A growing number of websites now allow users to choose a school first, then search for homes served by that school.
On century21.com, homebuyers who want to build their home search around school attendance boundaries can start by searching for schools within a geographic area, and then sort those schools them using criteria including GreatSchools ratings, parent ratings, number of students, and student-to-teacher ratio.
After identifying their preferred schools, Century 21’s “search by schools” tool lets homebuyers search for homes for sale that are served by those schools. Users can create listing alerts with schools as one of their search criteria, and receive email alerts when homes served by their preferred schools go on the market.
“Selecting the right school is an important part of the decision to buy a home. We have now made the search easier by delivering data to consumers precisely as they want it,” said Bev Thorne, chief marketing officer at Century 21, in a statement. “Our school search feature represents another proof point in our commitment to being an online leader of real estate information, and to delivering superior user experiences.”
Other sites offering similar school boundary search capabilities include Trulia, Estately and Redfin, reflecting a continued industry push to further personalize home search. Like Century 21, those sites license school boundary data from Vermont-based geographic information systems data provider Maponics.
Zillow also licenses data from Maponics and displays school attendance boundaries, but users cannot search for homes by school.
In April, realtor.com introduced search-by-school functionality to its mobile app, claiming it was the first search site to bring the feature to mobile.
Editor’s note: This story has been updated to note that Zillow displays school attendance boundaries, but users cannot search by school.
