How is it just a choice of living in a poor area vs a rich one? What if the people living in the poor areas don’t even have a high school degree? Can they suddenly decide they want to work and live in the rich area?
Problem is it's all concentrated to a handful of options, so everyone is chasing after those, and the sellers know it so they can price it such that almost all the value is extracted from the buyer.
It's funny to think that it could partly be a consequence of all the easily available school rankings, all the way form elementary to university, as people can sort themselves by socioeconomic class much easier. But it could go the other way too, with the concentration being a consequence widening gaps in socioeconomic class. Either way, it feels like a feedback loop to me.