Community Amenities Perception Gaps

New homeowner sentiment data on home values reveals residents in areas with higher median home values report being more satisfied with their access to local amenities, such as those for jobs and education.

The latest Zillow Housing Aspirations Report (ZHAR) also finds that residents in areas with lower home values report being less satisfied than their peers in higher-value areas, except with access to transportation. Education amenities had the greatest perception gap between high and low home value residents. Less than 40 percent of residents in areas where home values are in the bottom third of all neighborhoods say they have “relatively good access” to high-caliber educational amenities, while those in top-third communities have a 70 percent share.

The perceived access-to-education gap between the priciest and least-pricey neighborhoods is sizable in most metros. The largest gap is in St. Louis, where only 27 percent of people living in a bottom-tier neighborhood reported relatively good access to a high-quality education compared to 81 percent in the top tier, a 54-point difference. Other midwest metros, including Detroit and Chicago, also had large perceived gaps in educational access, with point differentials of 40 and 36 between bottom- and top-tier neighborhoods, respectively.

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