For the home and school buying simulation, my profile fell somewhat towards the middle of the pack. I had an annual gross income of $42,000, a $10,000 savings, ownership of a vehicle and monthly debts of $400. This gave me a net monthly income of $3,100. According to CNN, this level of income allowed me to search for a home in the price range of $117,381-$131,610 and a monthly mortgage payment of $530-$600.
While searching for homes, I looked primarily in West Hartford and Wethersfield. I settled on a condo in the east end of West Hartford, located at 90 Kane st. This property was selling for $128,000, which was at the high end of my budget but still a realistic option. At this price, my monthly house payment would be around $590 a month. If I was to take out a 30 year fixed mortgage at 4.25%, I would end up paying $92, 440 in interest by the time the principle was totally paid off. Compared to the $128,00 price tag of the property, this is unquestionably a large amount of interest.
My main reason for choosing the Kane st. property was due to the eventual educational benefits. All the properties I could afford in West Hartford were located in the East/Southeast corner of the town which is historically the location of a higher percentage of multi-family houses and affordable apartments. This is partially due to rigid and extremely old zoning regulations established in the town. This has led to a stronger minority presence in this section of town and the elementary schools that service it. The properties I looked into seriously fed into Smith, Webster Hill and Charter Oak elementary schools. All these schools sit around the state average in terms of test scores. However, they all feed into above average middle schools and very strong public high schools. My choice of the Kane st. condo would result in my children attending Smith elementary, King Philip (or possibly Bristow) for middle school and Hall high school.
In the end, I believe this simulation demonstrated that the notion of “escaping” to the suburbs may be exaggerated. Although I do feel that my choice of property would result in strong educational benefits for my children, it would still stretch my budget extremely thin. The presence of numerous magnet schools which perform around or slightly above the state testing average present a good option for those in the Hartford area. However, obviously they are limited in how many children they can accept and for this reason I decided that the move to West Hartford could better ensure quality education through elementary, middle, and high school. There is certainly a limited amount of affordable real estate in Hartford’s suburbs, which could make it difficult to pull off such a move even if a family decided that it was in their best interest.