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What Barron Trump’s New School Means for DC-Area Real Estate

Barron Trump has a new school! That’s right, now that the 11-year-old son of President Donald Trump is set to move with his mom, Melania, from Trump Tower in New York City to the White House this summer, the first family has chosen the school he will attend this fall: St. Andrew’s Episcopal School in Potomac, MD.

“We are very excited for our son to attend St. Andrew’s Episcopal School,” Melania said in a statement on Monday. “It is known for its diverse community and commitment to academic excellence.”

According to the New York Times, St. Andrew’s—a private school 20 miles from the White House—has 580 students from preschool through 12th grade on a 19-acre campus. Tuition costs $38,590 for middle school and $40,650 for high school.

St. Andrew’s is actually an offbeat choice for a president’s kid, since many predecessors attended Sidwell Friends School in Washington, DC (Sasha Obama is still a student there). But St. Andrew’s is in the national spotlight now, stamped with a huge gold star from the nation’s highest office. That got us wondering: What does that mean for the school—and real estate in the surrounding area?

Why good schools drive up real estate prices

Everyone knows the math: good schools = high real estate prices. And to be fair, the upscale town of Potomac had plenty to brag about long before news broke of Barron’s arrival.

“St. Andrew’s sits very close to the Bethesda/Potomac border, which is already known for its overabundance of excellent private schools within a relatively small geographic area,” explains Rachel Valentino, owner of Valentino Associates Team at Keller Williams in Washington, DC. “These schools are filled with well-known Washingtonians’ kids, albeit none is the president’s son. The area is also known for its great public schools.”

As a result, Potomac’s local real estate prices are already steep, with the median home price hovering around $875,000. That’s not too far from the median $1 million price tag for a home in Barron’s old stomping grounds of Manhattan, NY, and way higher than the $540,000 median home price within Washington, DC, itself.

But might Barron’s presence as a student push Potomac’s real estate prices even higher? Perhaps just a bit.

“Yes, this will bring a new attention to the school, which will certainly improve its own recruiting and tuition rates, but there likely will not be noticeable spillover appreciation into the surrounding homes,” Valentino predicts. “Perhaps a slight uptick for homes within a half-mile radius is reasonable for a few extra buyers, but nothing super noticeable over the other houses in the ZIP code.”

Other real estate agents agree that few home buyers will be clamoring for places near the school just to rub elbows with the first family. But as Emile L’Eplattenier, a New York real estate agent, puts it, “I don’t really see local home prices increasing, unless TMZ buys a place to stake out Barron.”

Private vs. public schools: Why they affect real estate differently

The reason that real estate observers are so unfazed by the advent of Barron is because St. Andrew’s is a private school, which can accept kids regardless of where they live. So while home buyers might think it would be nice to have a home near the school for the shorter drive, it’s by no means a necessity.

Public schools, by contrast, often have strict zoning laws mandating which addresses fall within their boundary. Families outside the district might be ineligible or have to apply for special consideration to get in, which explains why in-district homes cost a bundle.

“If a president’s child or any well-known celebrity attended a public school,” Valentino explains, “it would automatically shoot up the surrounding real estate prices, as people would clamor to be in-bounds. But this won’t happen with [Barron], given the school is private.”

The upshot of all this is, getting into St. Andrew’s might get a bit harder. However, if you’re worried about buying real estate in Potomac, relax. And, since history tends to repeat itself, consider what happened to the real estate around Sidwell—also a private school—once Sasha and Malia Obama arrived on the scene.

“Real estate around Sidwell did well over the past decade,” Valentino says, “but that was more due to supply and demand in the DC market in general and developers’ efforts in the area—not due to the school’s popularity.”

In fact, some real estate agents anticipate that Potomac’s real estate prices might actually suffer, due to the increased security detail (and traffic) that will now surround St. Andrew’s school.

“There could be a very brief softening of the market due to unknowns like increased congestion, or Secret Service hassles,” says L’Eplattenier.

Nonetheless, as Florida Realtor^® Cara Ameer points out, “Some people may initially choose to avoid the immediate area around the school due to the additional inconveniences, but once they see how things settle it will likely not deter them from buying in this area. They know one thing is for certain: Security will be very tight, so that can’t necessarily be a bad thing.”

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