Tools To Use When Looking At Potential Neighborhoods

By Ashley Smith

When you buy or rent a home, you become a stakeholder in the neighborhood in which you live. Each neighborhood has unique characteristics that you’ll want to investigate thoroughly before you follow through with renting, purchasing, or investing in your new home. Demographics such as safety, walkability, and local school districts are crucial to consider when you begin searching for neighborhoods. 

Of course, your real estate agent is a great point of contact for most questions regarding where your home is located in addition to the many tools available online. Check out the resources below to help make the process of finding your perfect neighborhood easy and stress-free. 

1. Google Maps Street View

    If you’re considering viewing a home, you are most likely able to view photos and a virtual tour of the inside and surrounding area of the home before you arrive at a showing. If you’re curious about checking out what the rest of the neighborhood looks like before you arrive, Google Maps Street View allows you to virtually maneuver through the entire neighborhood and surrounding areas! You can use this tool to virtually walk through the streets of a potential neighborhood, see the different nearby amenities like parks and shopping centers. Using this tool allows you to get a good grasp on the walkability and apparent safety before you even step foot on the property!

2. Neighborhood Scout

    Neighborhood Scout is a great online resource that provides investor grade analytics for any neighborhood in the United States. When you run a report on their website, it provides you with a very unique description of the neighborhood, including real estate prices, notable neighborhood characteristics such as if it is very walkable, or has significant vacancies, high incomes, and the like. Neighborhood Scout reports also include a comprehensive description of the demography of the neighborhood, commuting issues, relative access to jobs, and much more! It is a paid resource, but the information you are able to obtain about each neighborhood is truly invaluable, and far more trustworthy than stereotypical hunches or hearsay.

3. Nextdoor

    Nextdoor is an incredibly informational and fairly new resource to utilize when you are investigating different neighborhoods. It is essentially a social media platform where all the members of a neighborhood are able to communicate in real time. Not only are neighbors able to communicate with each other, they can also connect with local businesses and services. Many use the app to provide local recommendations, news updates, and even post things for sale! This resource should be able to give you a great perspective on the community that lives in and around the potential neighborhood that you’re researching.