12 ms·

When I bought, I noticed that every 10mins closer (rush hour driving) to Google was worth US$100k, and every point on the school rating was worth another US$100

When I bought, I noticed that every 10mins closer (rush hour driving) to Google was worth US$100k, and every point on the school rating was worth another US$100k. This led to an interesting gradient between downtown San Jose (bad schools) and Mountain View (good schools/close to Google). The same thing applied to Cupertino/Apple, with Willow Glen having better schools but a longer commute. We drew a circle on the map showing the longest distance I was willing to commute (on a bike), and bought on the circle.

sand500 8y ago
>We drew a circle on the map showing the longest distance I was willing to commute (on a bike), and bought on the circle. Walkscore makes it easy to figure this out but I don't know if Redfin or Zillow have this too https://walk.sc/2xuy0vk https://walk.sc/2xuy0vk
- jld 8y ago
  Walk Score was acquired by Redfin in 2014. Walk scores are on their listing pages, but I am not sure why they don't allow you to filter by Walk Score in the Redfin search UI. https://www.geekwire.com/2014/redfin-buys-walk-score-marking-first-acquisition-company-history/ https://www.geekwire.com/2014/redfin-buys-walk-score-marking...
chroem- 8y ago
Malicious startup idea: a company whose business model is driving rent-seeking real estate speculators into financial ruin. The company would buy residential real estate in a low cost of living area, followed by setting up offices there and paying its employees a high salary to do absolutely nothing. When rent-seekers inevitably drive up housing prices to as high as wages will tolerate, the company sells its real estate holdings in that location and moves somewhere else.
- itchyouch 8y ago
  I'd imagine that something like this would need to be done on enormous scale to make such a dent. How many engineers would a company need to hire? 1000? 5000? 100,000?
- jpollock 8y ago
  A better startup idea would be some way for people in a neighborhood to act collectively to improve the local school. How can someone who isn't a parent improve the quality of their local school? A point is worth _a lot_ around here. I know buyers are thinking to themselves: "I can either send my children to private school, or I can buy this house and send them to public school. Either I spend $35k/yr per child in fees, or I can spend $80k/yr and buy in a good district." At that point the $80k is a good buy - they're thinking they can get it back. I look at my school (poorly scored school) and ask "how can I convince them to send that private school funding money my way?" Typically I would vote up property taxes but I don't have that lever in California.
  - thatfrenchguy 8y ago
    Or maybe we should collectively wonder whether we're tracking the good metrics and whether GreatSchools is really tracking something useful. Not to mention they're funded by the CEO of Walmart :-/
  - slg 8y ago
    I think you just invented local government.
    - jpollock 8y ago
      I'm not allowed to participate in government. :)
  - njarboe 8y ago
    Extra money does not help school quality much. School quality, I think (someone on the internet who lives with a teacher), is determined: first the qualities of the students at the school, second the quality of the student's parents, third the quality of the teachers and school admin, fourth the quality of the school's infrastructure and equipment. You can greatly influence the last with money and the third somewhat with higher salaries, but not so much the first or the second. Say you took any poorly scored school and decided to create two schools from the student body. Same funding per child. Children whose parents come to a signup night for the new school get to go to the new school. The rest stay in the old school. The academic results from these two schools will be very different, just by this simple sorting. Money and better teachers help, but so far applying them from the outside doesn't seem to move the needle much.
- pjc50 8y ago
  I was wondering if you could skip the middle bit and just do it as a straight up fraud by pretending that the place had business, then I remembered how Florida happened.
- pvarangot 8y ago
  You seriously think VC is not doing that to hedge high risk investments in companies that pay high salaries?
- sytelus 8y ago
  Non-malicious startup idea: What if you bought houses in bad school area, created a great private/charter school in that area and sold your houses at much higher price? From OP's calculation, a great school may cause at least $200K price increase per house and depending on capacity of the school you need to build, I think this can turn out to be pretty good business.
  - xyzzyz 8y ago
    > What if you bought houses in bad school area, created a great private/charter school in that area and sold your houses at much higher price? It's not easy to create a good school. Certainly, simply throwing money at the problem doesn't work, as shown by an example of US public schools. The most certain way to achieve it is to heavily preselect the attending children, but that presupposes the existence of such quality base in the area around the school. The problem is that if it does, then their parents are usually already rich themselves, and so the house prices are already high.
    - yesenadam 8y ago
      Are these assumptions, that throwing money at the problem characterizes US public school, and that quality children usually have rich parents, anything like justified?
      - PeterisP 8y ago
        Regarding the second part, yes, the fact that academic achievement is highly influenced by socioeconomic status is well supported by research; a big part of the whole correlation is that higher socioeconomic status means better schools, but there's still a strong effect within the same school. There's a bunch of studies that try to estimate the nature/nurture split, but in any case higher socioeconomic status correlates positively with pretty much everything schooling-wise.
        yesenadam 8y ago
        Sure, but all that is another thing. I was questioning a particular assumption: quality children usually have rich parents Maybe that wasn't what was meant, but that was what was said.
- emmelaich 8y ago
  > "rent-seeking real estate speculators" A rent-seeking speculator? Not sure how you're using that phrase but I don't think rent-seeking applies here.
- TomK32 8y ago
  If that business is a school with formerly really bad grades then you might have an even better plan.
monocasa 8y ago
Aren't schools funded by property taxes? Is that a tautology that school rating at least is correlated with property values?
- bdamm 8y ago
  Only in America. And not even in all states. But certainly in California!
  - murph-almighty 8y ago
    Note that some states do have re-distribution schemes, such as NJ (Abbott Districts).
  - wbl 8y ago
    Not exactly. Thanks to Prop 13 and Serrano v. Priest most school funding is from the state in California, and allocated pretty equally across schools. Parental donations are what give some areas better resources.
- albertop 8y ago
  Only to some extend. CA spending per pupil is around the top among states in US, results are very close to the bottom.
  - lawtguy 8y ago
    California is actually below average for per pupil spending. In 2015, it was ranked 31st out of the 50 states + DC. See page 23 here: https://www.census.gov/content/dam/Census/library/publications/2017/econ/g15-aspef.pdf https://www.census.gov/content/dam/Census/library/publicatio...
- jldugger 8y ago
  They are, and California voters passed a ballot initiative limiting the rate property taxes can increase. End result: nominal tax rate above of 1 percent, effective rate at around half that.
ultrasounder 8y ago
"Mountain View (good schools/close to Google)" Did you mean to say Palo Alto. Mountain View public school system is like the millenials call it Trash. Mountain View which is home to 2 out of 5 Big tech (Google and Microsoft) has one of the worst Public school systems here in the bay area. Proves there is zilch direct correlation between High paying jobs and School district performance. In fact, Dublin/Pleasanton where the average wages are 20-30% less than in the Silicon Valley proper, public schools are awesome. Cupertino is an outlier IMHO.
- WillPostForFood 8y ago
  There is one mediocre elementary school in Mountain View that serves a poorer, hispanic area. Other than that is pretty good. Better than most of California, not as good as districts with high Asian populations in the bay area like Dublin or Cupertino.
  - dmourati 8y ago
    We bought our first home in Mountain View last year after renting for over eight years. All our schools are great. We're part of the Los Altos School District. Schools were a big part of where we chose to buy.
    - DonHopkins 8y ago
      At least the don't still have all those Doberman Pinchers running around and pooping in 444 Castro Street (aka "Dog City") any more. How times have changed. http://www.sfpeninsulacre.com/what-are-some-interesting-facts-about-castro-street-in-mountain-view/ http://www.sfpeninsulacre.com/what-are-some-interesting-fact... From 'Dog City' to cash cow: Downtown's tallest building, 444 Castro, was once a symbol of stagnation. https://www.mv-voice.com/morguepdf/2009/2009_01_02.mvv.section1.pdf https://www.mv-voice.com/morguepdf/2009/2009_01_02.mvv.secti... >For 10 years after it was built, the big office building on Castro Street was empty, prompting owners to worry that it would become targeted by thieves or squatters. Their solution was to let a pack of Doberman pinchers run loose on the building’s ground floor. >The dogs barked from the lobby at anyone walking down Castro Street, leading to nicknames for the structure like “Dog City” and “White Elephant.” Some called it the largest dog kennel in the world. >Meanwhile, the dogs had nowhere else to go, and so they soiled the building, leaving an increasingly horrible mess. >According to recently retired finance director Bob Locke, city officials joked that it took years to get rid of the smell. (The article has an archive photo that shows how the 12 stories were built from top to bottom down! And former mayor Bill Jelavich reminiscing about how the building was actually part of his plan to revitalize the downtown.) >“I never dreamed it would change the way it did,” Jelavich said of the city’s downtown.
DonHopkins 8y ago
Ben Shneiderman (a user interface researcher) developed and experimentally evaluated the "Dynamic Home Finder" in 1992, using "Dynamic Queries" to quickly and interactively visualize and explore different combinations of filters on a real-estate map, which inspired me to implement the "Frob-O-Matic Dynamic Zone Filter" in SimCity: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11365359 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11365359 >He and Christopher Williamson developed and empirically evaluated dynamic query sliders in the ingenious Dynamic Home Finder [4], which applies direct manipulation and infovis techniques to dynamic real time visual real-estate database queries. That inspired me to implement a similar real time information visualization technique in SimCity [5]. [4] Dynamic Home Finder: https://web.archive.org/web/20161119140228/http://hcil2.cs.umd.edu/trs/92-01/92-01.html https://web.archive.org/web/20161119140228/http://hcil2.cs.u... >Abstract: We designed, implemented, and evaluated a new concept for visualizing and searching databases utilizing direct manipulation called dynamic queries. Dynamic queries allow users to formulate queries by adjusting graphical widgets, such as sliders, and see the results immediately. By providing a graphical visualization of the database and search results, users can find trends and exceptions easily. User testing was done with eighteen undergraduate students who performed significantly faster using a dynamic queries interface compared to both a natural language system and paper printouts. The interfaces were used to explore a real-estate database and find homes meeting specific search criteria. [5] SimCity Frob-O-Matic Dynamic Zone Filter: https://youtu.be/_fVl4dGwUrA?t=3m35s https://youtu.be/_fVl4dGwUrA?t=3m35s
ryandrake 8y ago
I found the same thing but concluded the “price centerpoint” was Stanford. Ended up in Livermore :)

sand500 8y ago

>We drew a circle on the map showing the longest distance I was willing to commute (on a bike), and bought on the circle. Walkscore makes it easy to figure this out but I don't know if Redfin or Zillow have this too https://walk.sc/2xuy0vk https://walk.sc/2xuy0vk

jld 8y ago
Walk Score was acquired by Redfin in 2014. Walk scores are on their listing pages, but I am not sure why they don't allow you to filter by Walk Score in the Redfin search UI. https://www.geekwire.com/2014/redfin-buys-walk-score-marking-first-acquisition-company-history/ https://www.geekwire.com/2014/redfin-buys-walk-score-marking...

chroem- 8y ago

Malicious startup idea: a company whose business model is driving rent-seeking real estate speculators into financial ruin. The company would buy residential real estate in a low cost of living area, followed by setting up offices there and paying its employees a high salary to do absolutely nothing. When rent-seekers inevitably drive up housing prices to as high as wages will tolerate, the company sells its real estate holdings in that location and moves somewhere else.

itchyouch 8y ago
I'd imagine that something like this would need to be done on enormous scale to make such a dent. How many engineers would a company need to hire? 1000? 5000? 100,000?
jpollock 8y ago
A better startup idea would be some way for people in a neighborhood to act collectively to improve the local school. How can someone who isn't a parent improve the quality of their local school? A point is worth _a lot_ around here. I know buyers are thinking to themselves: "I can either send my children to private school, or I can buy this house and send them to public school. Either I spend $35k/yr per child in fees, or I can spend $80k/yr and buy in a good district." At that point the $80k is a good buy - they're thinking they can get it back. I look at my school (poorly scored school) and ask "how can I convince them to send that private school funding money my way?" Typically I would vote up property taxes but I don't have that lever in California.
- thatfrenchguy 8y ago
  Or maybe we should collectively wonder whether we're tracking the good metrics and whether GreatSchools is really tracking something useful. Not to mention they're funded by the CEO of Walmart :-/
- slg 8y ago
  I think you just invented local government.
  - jpollock 8y ago
    I'm not allowed to participate in government. :)
- njarboe 8y ago
  Extra money does not help school quality much. School quality, I think (someone on the internet who lives with a teacher), is determined: first the qualities of the students at the school, second the quality of the student's parents, third the quality of the teachers and school admin, fourth the quality of the school's infrastructure and equipment. You can greatly influence the last with money and the third somewhat with higher salaries, but not so much the first or the second. Say you took any poorly scored school and decided to create two schools from the student body. Same funding per child. Children whose parents come to a signup night for the new school get to go to the new school. The rest stay in the old school. The academic results from these two schools will be very different, just by this simple sorting. Money and better teachers help, but so far applying them from the outside doesn't seem to move the needle much.
pjc50 8y ago
I was wondering if you could skip the middle bit and just do it as a straight up fraud by pretending that the place had business, then I remembered how Florida happened.
pvarangot 8y ago
You seriously think VC is not doing that to hedge high risk investments in companies that pay high salaries?
sytelus 8y ago
Non-malicious startup idea: What if you bought houses in bad school area, created a great private/charter school in that area and sold your houses at much higher price? From OP's calculation, a great school may cause at least $200K price increase per house and depending on capacity of the school you need to build, I think this can turn out to be pretty good business.
- xyzzyz 8y ago
  > What if you bought houses in bad school area, created a great private/charter school in that area and sold your houses at much higher price? It's not easy to create a good school. Certainly, simply throwing money at the problem doesn't work, as shown by an example of US public schools. The most certain way to achieve it is to heavily preselect the attending children, but that presupposes the existence of such quality base in the area around the school. The problem is that if it does, then their parents are usually already rich themselves, and so the house prices are already high.
  - yesenadam 8y ago
    Are these assumptions, that throwing money at the problem characterizes US public school, and that quality children usually have rich parents, anything like justified?
    - PeterisP 8y ago
      Regarding the second part, yes, the fact that academic achievement is highly influenced by socioeconomic status is well supported by research; a big part of the whole correlation is that higher socioeconomic status means better schools, but there's still a strong effect within the same school. There's a bunch of studies that try to estimate the nature/nurture split, but in any case higher socioeconomic status correlates positively with pretty much everything schooling-wise.
      - yesenadam 8y ago
        Sure, but all that is another thing. I was questioning a particular assumption: quality children usually have rich parents Maybe that wasn't what was meant, but that was what was said.
emmelaich 8y ago
> "rent-seeking real estate speculators" A rent-seeking speculator? Not sure how you're using that phrase but I don't think rent-seeking applies here.
TomK32 8y ago
If that business is a school with formerly really bad grades then you might have an even better plan.

monocasa 8y ago

Aren't schools funded by property taxes? Is that a tautology that school rating at least is correlated with property values?

bdamm 8y ago
Only in America. And not even in all states. But certainly in California!
- murph-almighty 8y ago
  Note that some states do have re-distribution schemes, such as NJ (Abbott Districts).
- wbl 8y ago
  Not exactly. Thanks to Prop 13 and Serrano v. Priest most school funding is from the state in California, and allocated pretty equally across schools. Parental donations are what give some areas better resources.
albertop 8y ago
Only to some extend. CA spending per pupil is around the top among states in US, results are very close to the bottom.
- lawtguy 8y ago
  California is actually below average for per pupil spending. In 2015, it was ranked 31st out of the 50 states + DC. See page 23 here: https://www.census.gov/content/dam/Census/library/publications/2017/econ/g15-aspef.pdf https://www.census.gov/content/dam/Census/library/publicatio...
jldugger 8y ago
They are, and California voters passed a ballot initiative limiting the rate property taxes can increase. End result: nominal tax rate above of 1 percent, effective rate at around half that.

ultrasounder 8y ago

"Mountain View (good schools/close to Google)" Did you mean to say Palo Alto. Mountain View public school system is like the millenials call it Trash. Mountain View which is home to 2 out of 5 Big tech (Google and Microsoft) has one of the worst Public school systems here in the bay area. Proves there is zilch direct correlation between High paying jobs and School district performance. In fact, Dublin/Pleasanton where the average wages are 20-30% less than in the Silicon Valley proper, public schools are awesome. Cupertino is an outlier IMHO.

WillPostForFood 8y ago
There is one mediocre elementary school in Mountain View that serves a poorer, hispanic area. Other than that is pretty good. Better than most of California, not as good as districts with high Asian populations in the bay area like Dublin or Cupertino.
- dmourati 8y ago
  We bought our first home in Mountain View last year after renting for over eight years. All our schools are great. We're part of the Los Altos School District. Schools were a big part of where we chose to buy.
  - DonHopkins 8y ago
    At least the don't still have all those Doberman Pinchers running around and pooping in 444 Castro Street (aka "Dog City") any more. How times have changed. http://www.sfpeninsulacre.com/what-are-some-interesting-facts-about-castro-street-in-mountain-view/ http://www.sfpeninsulacre.com/what-are-some-interesting-fact... From 'Dog City' to cash cow: Downtown's tallest building, 444 Castro, was once a symbol of stagnation. https://www.mv-voice.com/morguepdf/2009/2009_01_02.mvv.section1.pdf https://www.mv-voice.com/morguepdf/2009/2009_01_02.mvv.secti... >For 10 years after it was built, the big office building on Castro Street was empty, prompting owners to worry that it would become targeted by thieves or squatters. Their solution was to let a pack of Doberman pinchers run loose on the building’s ground floor. >The dogs barked from the lobby at anyone walking down Castro Street, leading to nicknames for the structure like “Dog City” and “White Elephant.” Some called it the largest dog kennel in the world. >Meanwhile, the dogs had nowhere else to go, and so they soiled the building, leaving an increasingly horrible mess. >According to recently retired finance director Bob Locke, city officials joked that it took years to get rid of the smell. (The article has an archive photo that shows how the 12 stories were built from top to bottom down! And former mayor Bill Jelavich reminiscing about how the building was actually part of his plan to revitalize the downtown.) >“I never dreamed it would change the way it did,” Jelavich said of the city’s downtown.

DonHopkins 8y ago

Ben Shneiderman (a user interface researcher) developed and experimentally evaluated the "Dynamic Home Finder" in 1992, using "Dynamic Queries" to quickly and interactively visualize and explore different combinations of filters on a real-estate map, which inspired me to implement the "Frob-O-Matic Dynamic Zone Filter" in SimCity: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11365359 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11365359 >He and Christopher Williamson developed and empirically evaluated dynamic query sliders in the ingenious Dynamic Home Finder [4], which applies direct manipulation and infovis techniques to dynamic real time visual real-estate database queries. That inspired me to implement a similar real time information visualization technique in SimCity [5]. [4] Dynamic Home Finder: https://web.archive.org/web/20161119140228/http://hcil2.cs.umd.edu/trs/92-01/92-01.html https://web.archive.org/web/20161119140228/http://hcil2.cs.u... >Abstract: We designed, implemented, and evaluated a new concept for visualizing and searching databases utilizing direct manipulation called dynamic queries. Dynamic queries allow users to formulate queries by adjusting graphical widgets, such as sliders, and see the results immediately. By providing a graphical visualization of the database and search results, users can find trends and exceptions easily. User testing was done with eighteen undergraduate students who performed significantly faster using a dynamic queries interface compared to both a natural language system and paper printouts. The interfaces were used to explore a real-estate database and find homes meeting specific search criteria. [5] SimCity Frob-O-Matic Dynamic Zone Filter: https://youtu.be/_fVl4dGwUrA?t=3m35s https://youtu.be/_fVl4dGwUrA?t=3m35s

ryandrake 8y ago

I found the same thing but concluded the “price centerpoint” was Stanford. Ended up in Livermore :)