Phoenix Real Estate Predictions 2018 (Buckeye: crime, home, buyers)

[AZ_Rookie]

The problem isn't taxation for education... It's the allocation of funds (and often, the bozos responsible for the allocation) that creates problems...

When the funds aren't properly utilized, many knee-jerk reactions are "we need more money"... And often the quick fix is higher taxes.

I've lived through the mess (and in many cases corruption) that is created. So far AZ utilizes funds FAR better than CA does (not just education, but all tax revenue). But it won't take much for things to go sideways - if residents don't use common sense, and instead react on emotion... Screaming for more money is not always the answer.

So to the concept of higher property costs and therefore higher property tax... don't be fooled into thinking education gets better... I think that's the disconnect in the last couple posts...

[MN-Born-n-Raised]

Originally Posted by AZ_Rookie

So to the concept of higher property costs and therefore higher property tax... don't be fooled into thinking education gets better... I think that's the disconnect in the last couple posts...

In every other product/service that you buy, there is a correlation that the more money you spend, the better quality or service you receive. OF COURSE there are outliers. And OF COURSE wasting funds is a problem. In every single public and private situation, I would have spent the $$'s differently. So by definition, everyone but my spending approach would be considered wasteful to various degrees to other people. Also, just like any other product or service, the law of diminishing returns is alive and well. But the bottom line is, all things being equal, spending more will get you better quality. re-read my last point. I can find you 6,000 ways to spend more and get less if I want to justify a point.

With that all said, let me see if I understand your point. You think that you get the same caliber of teachers when you pay the bottom of the barrel wages; 49th in the country to be exact (https://news.azpm.org/p/news-topical...cher-shortage/ ). AZ also has some of the highest class size ratios in the country as well (23 AZ students for every 1 teacher; ratio among country's highes - 3TV | CBS 5 ). No, I'm not a teacher. But I've talked with many and class size makes their job much harder. The kids that struggle will suffer more.

You think AZ has figured out a way to underpay and overwork their employees and get JUST as good performance. Our kids went to college for 11th and 12th grade. Cost to parents: $0.00. They applied themselves along with having motivated teachers with reasonable class sizes to test in the top percentiles in the USA. Like it or not, AZ students THAT WANT TO DO THEIR BEST are not getting as good of an education. For parents that put a high value on the caliber of education aren't going to move to AZ. That's really not up for debate.

[Hal Roach]

Originally Posted by MN-Born-n-Raised

Yep! Especially including those jobs supporting the new jobs (retail, hospitals, construction, etc). Let's pick on Seattle. Land locked (ocean and mountains) and horrific traffic for people who have to commute. Then you get growth from a company wanting to hire 100,000 new people Amazon plans to hire 100,000 U.S. employees over next 18 months | The Seattle Times and you have a recipe for explosive RE growth.

Also, the more liberal leaning cities place a higher value on good schools. Something that the PHX area will never comprehend. I'm not debating how important it is or why. But big dollar cities like Boston ($$$$), the Bay area ($$$$$$), Seattle ($$$$) attract a more educated population and demand spending more $$'s on K-12. That's not going to happen with #50 ranked public schools like PHX metro. See https://www.insidehighered.com/ news...-liberal-peers Since high paying jobs correlate to higher education, we have a disconnect here. Look at the amount of colleges in the hottest areas. In Boston for instance where my son is going to medical school, you have Boston College, Harvard, Wellesely, Boston University, MIT, Berkeley College of Music, Tufts, U Mass, Worcester Polytechnic etc etc. Actually, a total of 77 colleges. In PHX area, you have ASU and the pay-per-view University of Phoenix along with a few small no-name privates an CC's. IMHO, they teach calculus and psychology 101 the same at CC as they do Stanford. But more liberally minded people who on average, have more education are not going to come to PHX when the schools and colleges are below average ranking.

I'm with you Tall Traveler. Expect PHX RE to be a value for a long while. The PHX mindset is to build out, not up. Just look at the skyline. And there is plenty of land.

I hate to break the news to you, Minnisoda, but the inner Bay area schools are horrific...Oakland, SF, Berkeley, San Jose, Fremont, Hayward, and so are the outer areas that are even remotely affordable.
DC has a very high per pupil spend.....uncivilized war zones. ...LAUSD is commonly considered the worst in America. Vegas is worse than Phoenix....spending somewhat more.

And what do the Tech Titans consistently say: not that they actively recruit people from high spend areas like Jersey, Pennsylvania, New York vs. the South or Arizona....they are demanding access to Indians and Chinese..100 bucks per student, per day in Pittsburgh or 100 bucks per student PER YEAR in Mumbai???? You know darn well who they want. Will 15 Dollars per hour make the burgers better at McDonalds? We may never find out because my McDonalds are replacing the cashiers with machines...and that is instead of 1.50 per hour, which they are lucky to get here. I had a cone at DQ yesterday...good ole Warren Buffet, liberal philanthropist...they were making 1.20 per hour...cleaner than the DQ in Nogales.

[MN-Born-n-Raised]

Originally Posted by Hal Roach

I hate to break the news to you, Minnisoda, but the inner Bay area schools are horrific...Oakland, SF, Berkeley, San Jose, Fremont, Hayward, and so are the outer areas that are even remotely affordable.
DC has a very high per pupil spend.....uncivilized war zones. ...LAUSD is commonly considered the worst in America. Vegas is worse than Phoenix....spending somewhat more.

I've studied the topic hours on end and here is the skinny. THE highest spending districts (by FAR) have the most problems. It could be special education ($20K-$40K+ per student) or troubled kids who's district/schools basically hire babysitters. They spend $20K per student and those are outliers. They are spending a bundle for surrogate parents (a.k.a. "teachers", police, counselors, after school programs, and the list goes on. But the thing is, all too many students really don't want to do their very best and they coast.

Furthermore, no way in H_LL is some of the Bay burbs "horrible". Allow me to qualify... IF in many of your listed districts you want to learn, then you best hang with the motivated kids in the school and go and attend the motivated / higher expectation classes. So the "average" test score in the school is semi-meanless. Point in case: our kids went to an extremely average MN high school. By memory, 40% fail reading standards and 45% math standards. Yet our kids tested off the charts and their friends went to great colleges and are doing well( think top 0.25% in college standardized tests in 11th and 12th grade). The difference was parenting, parenting, parenting, and parenting (in that order). And some luck I suppose...

Therefore statistics can be twisted any way you want. But our kids went to a well funded school and they had motivated teachers with reasonably sized class rooms. Therefore, I propose having a higher ranked school (by looking at test scores) will really skew the perceived quality of education that is offered to motivated families. But motivated families often time are educated, make more, and live in nicer hoods. Hence, their "averages" are higher but the education isn't necessarily better. Therefore, so long as schools in Berkley, SF and other spots have a srong group of motivated students, they will go on to kick butt. In other problem areas where students are more concerned with staying out of fights (where a low percentage of students that actually want to do well), they won't get a quality education. I suspect some poorer schools will unfortunately will fit that profile.

[Hal Roach]

GM spends 70 per hour on labor, Toyota North America spends 35....but your story reminds me of another issue, and that is once you start at a good university, where you went to high school becomes almost meaningless. And the overuse of the gifted labels is almost as bad as the overuse of the ADHD label. Some of the latest news clips I have seen from the educrats include things like declaring Math discriminatory, throwing cursive out the window, and forbidding the use of the term "Father's Day." Ever read Judge Bork? "Hariet Tubmann gets four pages; Ronald Reagan gets two sentences equating him to Herbert Hoover."

[MN-Born-n-Raised]

Originally Posted by Hal Roach

GM spends 70 per hour on labor, Toyota North America spends 35....

I've already explained this earlier. 1st semester of college taught us the basics (Econ 101 and stats). Reason: Outliers and law of diminishing returns. If I spend $1,000,000 an hour, I won't get a better person than $500K. Or $300K an hour or even $1,000 an hour (law of diminishing returns). Also, I underlined a statement, "ALL THINGS BEING EQUAL". So the question you should have asked is will Toyota get a better employee at $70 an hour versus Toyota at $35? ON AVERAGE, of course they will.

Since wages doesn't matter, how about I hire someone for 1/2 of what you make. Are YOU going to work as hard, smart, and will 1/2 wages motivate you to stay when someone wants to hire you for more money? I could give a thousand examples; have you observed the caliber of employee at Sam's Club versus the higher wage Costco? It isn't close. I'm a little surprised I had to type this ^^. It goes to show you how important education is (econ 101 etc).

[AZ_Rookie]

^^^ you did miss my point, several,posts up (I'm not going to quote your diatribe)...

Allocation of funds is critical. Misappropriation of funds is a problem and the solution isn't throwing more money at it.

Also, I keep hearing how teachers are lowest paid, followed by comparisons of locations with higher COL... Compare apples to apples... And realize more taxes aren't always the answer.

To the point of the thread - don't expect better education just because property taxes go up (due to increased real estate costs).

It's a simple premise, but you can make it as convoluted as you'd like... What would this forum be without debate and drama

[sh9730]

Originally Posted by AZ_Rookie

To the point of the thread - don't expect better education just because property taxes go up (due to increased real estate costs).:

The point of this thread was lost pages ago - not that it isn't an interesting discussion - but on the margins EVERYTHING can or might affect real estate prices.

[MN-Born-n-Raised]

Originally Posted by AZ_Rookie

^^^ you did miss my point, several,posts up (I'm not going to quote your diatribe)...

Allocation of funds is critical. Misappropriation of funds is a problem and the solution isn't throwing more money at it.

Also, I keep hearing how teachers are lowest paid, followed by comparisons of locations with higher COL... Compare apples to apples... And realize more taxes aren't always the answer.

To the point of the thread - don't expect better education just because property taxes go up (due to increased real estate costs).

It's a simple premise, but you can make it as convoluted as you'd like... What would this forum be without debate and drama

If your point is that district (especially years ago) waste $$'s, my answer is of course they did/do. I'm a firm believer of making sure districts have a lean budget. If your key point was that some districts waste a lot of dollars, and more money isn't the automatic answer, then we also agree. So you cannot simply give more money because they ask for it. Nor can we say "no more money" because we learn that they are not perfect. Because when you spend someone else's money on someone else, 99% of the time there will be at minimum, some waste. If someone is bucking for 0% waste, it will be impossible. I often hear neighbors arguments as to why they refuse to vote for a levy because they find out a specific topic of waste. Well of course because it is human nature.

So my reply to you could have been misread. Too many people say "there is no correlation to money and test scores" and point to the worse districts who spend the most. That's what I thought you were coming from. To those who do, I add in a few 's. Those are outliers.

And we agree, higher COL areas will spend more $$'s on employees. But PHX, has about an average COL. More specifically, it's at 94% (100% is average). But yes, we should normalize each location. Considering the COL Index as fairly close to average, I fully expect PHX area teachers (normalized wages) will still be in the last quartile. I've already linked to the average class size ratio (PHX are again are much higher than average) which doesn't need and massaging.

If your exclusive point was " - don't expect better education just because property taxes go up (due to increased real estate costs)." Then we agree. At the same token, I would say "DO expect below average education when you pay your teachers 49th, have significantly higher class room size, and spend the lowest level in the country". In my eyes, that isn't up for debate. Since I read your initial post as saying my logic was flawed, I put you in a bucket. If I read you wrong, I apologize.

[Potential_Landlord]

I see this thread is sliding off topic somewhat. Here's my opinion on RE values and school funding - this is probably one of the most important criteria where to buy a home. It doesn't matter so much if higher school funding = better education for my kids is real or just perceived (or somewhere in between). As long as parents act on this it matters for RE values.