Toronto Homes near Schools offering IB programs

And now it’s time for your Toronto Real Estate ABC’s.

A) There’s a new incentive for buying a house right now. B) A school with an International Baccalaureate diploma.

C) It’s a smart move.

Know this, and you can advance to the head of Toronto’s home-purchasing class.

Anecdotal evidence suggests that IB schools are behind a recent spate of bidding wars erupting in the GTA.

Widely perceived as a private school perk, academically elite IB programs are increasingly on offer through the public system, and houses in neighbourhoods with IB schools already in place are reaping the benefits.

“They’re a new real estate trend,” says Bill Thom an agent with Re/Max who says much of his business these days is coming from parents looking to buy homes in areas where there are schools with an IB program.

“Instead of giving $25,000 to a private school, I tell my clients to put that money instead on their mortgage. An IB school in their neighbourhood is a guaranteed world-class education, so why look elsewhere?”



Agent Bill Thom in Richmond Hill, an area that he believes has exploded in value thanks to local IB programs.
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Mr. Thom says that houses in areas with an IB school are selling faster and for more money right now than those in areas where this rigorous academic program isn’t already in place.

One of his recent listings was a two-storey at Bayview and 16th Avenue that after only five days on the market received 10 offers, largely because of nearby Bayview Secondary School, which implemented its IB program about five years ago.

“When that came in, it changed Bayview Hill’s housing prices,” says Mr. Thom. “Then they turned Bayview Hill Elementary School into an IB school too, so that made Bayview Hill even more desirable.”

IB schools have a reputation for providing among the most challenging of high school programs. The International Baccalaureate was originally developed in Switzerland in 1948 as a rigorous study program that would give the children of diplomats an entree to schools around the world.

The two-year academically enriched program stresses enhanced time-management skills along with an academic program combining advanced study with creative and athletic pursuits.

Home buying
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DEIRDRE KELLY
Toronto— From Friday's Globe and Mail

Toronto schools offering IB programs are often sought out by people moving to the city for the first time who are looking to buy real estate, says Alex Pino, an agent with Sotheby’s International Realty Canada.

“I think houses that are close to IB schools sell faster as there are many buyers coming from all over the world to the city looking for this education for their kids,” Mr. Pino says.

“In Rosedale and Summerhill, we see houses close to Branksome Hall and The York School selling faster and sometimes with several families bidding on them as they want their kids to walk to the IB schools. We just sold a Rosedale house to a family from South Asia whose girls are going to the local IB School.”

But it’s the public schools with IB programs having the biggest impact on the local real estate market, experts say.

Such is the case of Monarch Park Collegiate, an east-end high school that for decades has had a bad rap for being in a sometimes rough-and-tumble working-class neighbourhood.

Real estate surrounding the school has rarely been a hot commodity.

But that has changed since the implementation in September, 2008, of an IB world program that over the past two years is credited with turning the neighbourhood around, at least from a real estate point of view.

“Frequently, I get calls from people wanting to move into the area from another province or country who are looking for an IB school,” says John Au, Monarch Park’s IB program co-ordinator. “It becomes a factor for them wanting to move into the neighbourhood. They want to be closer to our school.”

Homeowners don’t necessarily have to buy in areas with an IB school in order to attend. As a specialized program within the Toronto District School Board (which, unlike other districts, doesn’t charge students wanting an IB diploma), the IB program is open to students outside a particular school’s catchment area.

But, increasingly, families are drawn to a neighbourhood, wanting proximity to their child’s education.

In Parkdale, an until recently downtrodden neighbourhood in Toronto’s west end, the presence of an IB school is cited as one of the reasons the area is turning itself around.

Parkdale Collegiate, founded in 1888 and the city’s second oldest high school, implemented its IB diploma in September, 2008, and since that time enrolment has spiked as a result of families actively seeking out the school, says Andrew Lin, the school’s IB program co-ordinator.

“We had 600 students before, when we didn’t have the program, and we now have 875. We average about 50 to 90 new students a year,” Mr. Lin says.

“The IB program is one of the main reasons for that increase. People in the neighbourhood recognize the value of an IB world school, and they recognize its value to the community.”