Jefferson County School Districts: Can You Get the House Too?

Yes—but the bigger question is how many chances you would have had.

From January 1 through October 5, 2026, 43 of 206 qualifying Fox C-6 single-family resales closed for $250,000 or less. That’s 20.9% of the market I analyzed.

So $250,000 did buy homes in Fox C-6, the district that covers Arnold and much of Imperial.

But it put a buyer into a narrow part of the district’s market.

At $300,000, the number increased to 87 sales, or 42.2%.

At $350,000, it increased to 117 sales, or 56.8%.

That’s the difference between asking “Can I buy there?” and asking “How much of the market can I actually shop?”

Arnold buyer guide · Imperial buyer guide

It reached half of the market.

In the study period, 76 of 152 qualifying Northwest R-I single-family resales closed for $300,000 or less. That’s 50.0%.

At $250,000, the share was 26.3%. At $350,000, it was 66.4%.

In this dataset, Northwest R-I took in most High Ridge, House Springs and Cedar Hill sales and part of Fenton’s, so a $300,000 buyer there was shopping the middle of the district’s closed-sale market, not the bottom of it.

High Ridge buyer guide · House Springs buyer guide · Cedar Hill buyer guide

In this dataset, $300,000 reached 56.4% of Festus R-VI’s qualifying sales and 36.2% of Hillsboro R-III’s.

That doesn’t make one district better.

It means the same budget occupied a different position in each housing market.

The pace was different too. Festus R-VI homes sold in a median of 28 days on market; Hillsboro R-III homes took 41.5.

Hillsboro R-III’s homes were also newer and larger on median: built 2001 and 1,851 square feet, against 1988 and 1,665 in Festus R-VI.

That’s the kind of difference a district median alone can hide.

Among homes that closed for $250,001 to $300,000 in 2026, Windsor C-1 gave the most house: a median of 1,675 square feet at $160 a square foot. Dunklin R-V gave the least, 1,347 square feet at $215. The newest homes were in Dunklin R-V, built 2008 on median.

Here, “what $300,000 buys” means the homes that closed between $250,001 and $300,000: the top of a $300,000 budget, where a buyer spending close to the full amount actually shops. 165 homes in the county closed in that range.

More square feet isn’t the only way to get more house. Look at the year-built column: a smaller, newer house can mean fewer near-term repairs, and the days-on-market column shows how fast that part of each district moved.

Among homes that closed for $200,001 to $250,000 in 2026, Festus R-VI gave the most house: a median of 1,394 square feet at $161 a square foot. De Soto 73 gave the least, 1,222 square feet at $181. The newest homes were in Windsor C-1, built 1979 on median.

Among homes that closed for $300,001 to $350,000 in 2026, Windsor C-1 gave the most house: a median of 1,942 square feet at $160 a square foot. Dunklin R-V gave the least, 1,488 square feet at $214. The newest homes were in Dunklin R-V, built 2021 on median.

Among homes that closed for $350,001 to $400,000 in 2026, Northwest R-I gave the most house: a median of 2,320 square feet at $165 a square foot. Festus R-VI gave the least, 2,097 square feet at $177. The newest homes were in Fox C-6, built 2013 on median.

The district that gives you the most house changes with the budget, so start from your own number. The house tool above runs the same comparison for a specific size and layout.

Let’s stop comparing a 1,000-square-foot ranch in one district with a 3,000-square-foot two-story in another.

For this comparison, I narrowed the data to one specific kind of house:

3 bedrooms · 2 bathrooms · ranch · 1,300–1,500 square feet

That’s a practical way to approximate a buyer asking:

“What would a roughly 1,400-square-foot ranch cost in different Jefferson County school districts?”

The answer isn’t just a price.

It’s also how often that house showed up.

Fox C-6 vs. Northwest R-I: What Did a Similar Ranch Cost?

In Fox C-6, 12 matching homes sold during the study period. The median sale price was $330,500.

In Northwest R-I, 6 matching homes sold. The median sale price was $289,250.

That’s a $41,250 difference in the median matching sale.

But price is only half the story.

The Fox C-6 data produced twice as many matching sales.

So a buyer choosing between these districts wasn’t only deciding whether Fox C-6 was worth paying more for.

They were also deciding how much a bigger pool of houses that fit the same basic description was worth to them.

The tables below hold the style and size steady—ranch homes in two size ranges—and compare what buyers paid per square foot in each school district.

The small ranch sold for a median of $244 a square foot in Hillsboro R-III and $196 in Fox C-6. On a 1,200-square-foot house, that’s about $57,600.

Read the year-built column before you read that as a district premium. The Hillsboro R-III ranches had a median build year of 2001; the Fox C-6 ranches, 1966. Part of that gap is a newer house, not a different district.

The count matters as much as the median.

Only 4 of the 12 districts had even three matching sales of this exact house in more than nine months.

A low count does not mean a buyer cannot purchase that kind of house in the district. It means very few homes matching those exact criteria closed during the period I studied.

And a small sample means the median price is directional, not a precise prediction of the next sale.

Sometimes buyers keep raising their budget because they assume price is why they can’t find the right house.

But what if the house itself is scarce?

Jefferson County’s smaller districts make the point. Sunrise R-IX had 10 qualifying resales in more than nine months of 2026, and Grandview R-II had 9. You could have enough money to buy in either one and still wait a long time for the right house.

That is a different problem than being priced out.

A price problem can sometimes be solved by changing the budget.

A scarcity problem usually forces a different decision:

change the district, change the house, or accept that the search may take longer.

Scarcity and competition are related, but they are not the same thing.

That’s why the tool also looks at days on market and sale price compared with original asking price.

Across whole districts, the pace varied widely:

• Fox C-6: 9-day median CDOM, and 46.6% of sales closed above original list price.
• Windsor C-1: 10.5-day median CDOM, 48.3% above original list.
• Hillsboro R-III: 41.5-day median CDOM, 22.5% above original list.

For the roughly 1,400-square-foot 3-bed / 2-bath ranch, Fox C-6 had 12 matching sales with a 8-day median CDOM, and 58.3% sold above original list. Northwest R-I had 6, with a 3.5-day median CDOM and 50.0% above original list.

Those are small, specific cohorts, so don’t turn them into a prediction about the next house.

Use them as evidence that price, availability and competition are three separate parts of the buying decision.

The median sale price moved between $274,900 and $325,000 from month to month. Price per square foot was steadier: it peaked at $179 in April and was $162 by September.

Sometimes another $50,000 barely changes the search.

Sometimes it changes everything.

A few examples from the 2026 closed-sale data:

• Hillsboro R-III: At $250,000, 9 of 80 sales (11.2%) were within budget. At $300,000, 29 sales (36.2%) were.
• Dunklin R-V: At $250,000, 11 of 42 sales (26.2%) were within budget. At $300,000, 24 sales (57.1%) were.
• Windsor C-1: At $250,000, 11 of 58 sales (19.0%) were within budget. At $300,000, 26 sales (44.8%) were.
• Festus R-VI: At $250,000, 25 of 78 sales (32.1%) were within budget. At $300,000, 44 sales (56.4%) were.
• Fox C-6: At $300,000, 87 of 206 sales (42.2%) were within budget. At $350,000, 117 sales (56.8%) were.
• De Soto 73: At $150,000, 9 of 58 sales (15.5%) were within budget. At $200,000, 25 sales (43.1%) were.

The point isn’t that you should automatically spend another $50,000.

It’s to understand what the extra money actually buys you.

If another $50,000 barely changes your options, stretching may not solve the problem you think it will.

If it opens a much larger part of the market, at least you can see the tradeoff before deciding whether the higher payment is worth it.

If “lowest” means the lowest median closed single-family sale price in this 2026 dataset, the five lowest-price districts were:

That is a housing-price comparison.

It is not a ranking of school quality, desirability, safety, or where anyone should live.

The three lowest medians sit within about $4,000 of each other, and Sunrise R-IX’s rests on only 10 sales. Condition, size, age and lot can be very different from one sale to the next.

That’s why the interactive lets you move beyond the district median and compare the kind of house you actually want.

Percentages mean:

Share of QA-clean 2026 closed single-family resales in that district that sold at or below the stated price.

A percentage is more useful than a simple yes or no.

If 6% of a district’s sales were within your budget, homes at that price existed—but you were shopping a very different market than someone whose budget reached 75% of the district’s sales.

None of these percentages tell you what’s listed today. They tell you where your budget sat inside the market buyers actually closed on during the study period.

Rockwood R-VI (Jefferson Co. part) covers the Jefferson County side of the district around Eureka and Pacific. The St. Louis County housing study covers the rest of Rockwood.

Across 12 Jefferson County school districts, the median annual property tax on homes sold in 2026 was $2,084, according to MLS sales records. District medians ranged from $1,037 in Crystal City 47 to $5,019 in the Rockwood R-VI (Jefferson Co. part), across 744 sales from January 1 to October 5, 2026.

The bill follows the county’s assessed value and the local tax rates, not the price the house sold for. That is why the table below lists each district’s typical bill rather than a tax rate.

For homes that sold for $250,000 to $349,999 in 2026, the median annual property tax was $1,952, and the middle half of bills ran from $1,534 to $2,360, according to MLS sales records across 12 Jefferson County school districts.

For homes of 1,500–1,999 square feet, the median annual property tax ranged from $1,199 in Crystal City 47 to $5,019 in the Rockwood R-VI (Jefferson Co. part), among the 10 districts with at least five such sales in 2026, according to MLS sales records.

Comparing the same size house matters because a district with bigger or newer homes will show a higher median bill even if similar houses are taxed about the same.

The median annual property tax on a 3-bedroom house sold in Jefferson County in 2026 was $1,916, with the middle half of bills from $1,288 to $2,726, across 410 sales, according to MLS sales records. Four-bedroom homes ran $2,909 at the median.

Festus R-VI is a good example.

Its median sale price in this dataset was $292,500.

But 20.5% of its qualifying sales closed for $200,000 or less, while 15.4% closed above $400,000.

That doesn’t mean a $200,000 buyer had access to the same houses as a buyer at the median.

It means a single median number can hide a wide spread of condition, size, location and price.

That’s why this page shows both:

where the middle of the district landed and how much of the market actually fell below your budget.

When the house you want doesn’t fit the district you want, there are only a few levers to pull.

You can spend more.

You can accept a different kind of house.

You can broaden the district.

Or you can wait.

The hard part is knowing which compromise actually changes your options.

The interactive should help answer that.

If adding $50,000 adds dozens of historical matches, that’s useful.

If it barely changes the search but broadening the square-footage range or crossing a district line changes it dramatically, that’s useful too.

The goal isn’t to push you toward the most expensive option.

It’s to show you what each decision buys you before you make it.

Jefferson County school-district lines do not follow mailing addresses.

• Imperial: 57 sales in Fox C-6 and 39 in Windsor C-1.
• Fenton (the Jefferson County side): 32 in Fox C-6 and 19 in Northwest R-I.
• Festus: 75 in Festus R-VI, 19 in Jefferson R-VII, and 12 more across De Soto 73, Hillsboro R-III and Crystal City 47.

And MLS school fields can be wrong. During QA for this page, one Arnold sale listed with another district’s schools had to be corrected before the housing metrics were regenerated.

So use this page to compare housing markets.

When a specific school assignment matters to your purchase, verify the exact address directly with the school district before you write an offer.

I started with a countywide MLS export of closed single-family resales in Jefferson County from January 1 through October 5, 2026.

The export covers vacant or owner-occupied homes. It excludes new construction and tenant-occupied properties.

Each sale’s school district comes from the high school listed in MLS. Fox C-6 includes both Fox and Seckman high school attendance areas.

Then I ran a separate QA pass. No public remarks showed a current tenant or lease, so no sales were removed for occupancy. One school-district misassignment was corrected after a geography review.

Two districts had a single sale each, Meramec Valley R-III and Kingston K-14. Those 2 sales are left out of the district comparisons because one sale can’t describe a market.

The final dataset contains 756 qualifying closed sales across 12 school districts.

For property taxes, I matched a second MLS export that includes each listing’s annual tax amount to this dataset by location, close date and price. 744 of the 756 sales matched with a tax amount. The tax is the seller’s most recent annual bill as listed in MLS, not a projection of the next owner’s bill.

How the numbers work

Median sold price is the middle Close Price in the district.

Budget share is the percentage of qualifying district sales that closed at or below the selected budget.

Comparable-house analysis uses the actual house characteristics in the dataset rather than estimating a price by multiplying a district-wide price per square foot.

The default “roughly 1,400-square-foot ranch” comparison means:

exactly 3 bedrooms · exactly 2 bathrooms · Ranch architectural style · 1,300–1,500 square feet

Days on market uses CDOM from the source data.

Sold above original asking compares Close Price with Original List Price.

Percentiles in the interactive (25th, 75th and the middle 50%) use linear interpolation between ranked sale prices, the same method as Excel’s PERCENTILE.INC.

What this data cannot tell you

This is historical closed-sale data.

It does not show today’s active inventory.

It does not guarantee that a similar house will become available.

It does not predict how long you personally will wait.

It does not determine whether a school district or individual school is right for you.

And it does not replace address-level school-boundary verification.

The tool above answers the housing question.

The town guides go deeper into each community: incorporation, local rules, housing stock and the things buyers should verify before making an offer.