5 Tips for Choosing a Neighborhood

You're not just buying a house, you're also buying a neighborhood. Sometimes, though, one resident's "neighborhood glories" are another resident's "neighborhood warts".

There is more to weigh than just crime, prices and commute.

1. The time of day when you first lay eyes on a prospective house can affect your impression of the neighborhood. Make sure to visit at various hours. A property can be totally different at night. The same can be said for neighborhood traffic, which can change dramatically at rush hour, or traffic ona Saturday can be completely different than on a Tuesday.

2. Neighborhood choice can be a pocketbook issue, and not just because of house prices and property taxes. Commuting costs, of both time and money are critical.

3. Ask questions of people who already live there. The locals usually freely offer their opinions of neighborhood safety, noise, school performance, commuting times, etc.
4. The Internet can be a boon for researching the nitty-gritty. Neighborhoodscout.com, for example is a subscription service that offers in depth look at such considerations as crime statistics (for 17,000 law-enforcement jurisdictions), school performance data, and quarterly price-appreciation records of area homes. The service costs $ 29.99 a month or $14.99 for a six month subscription.
5. Some neighborhood characteristics can be hard to cram into numerical categories or scores. Nabewise.com has taken 65 "quality of life" characteristics and set them up as criteria for neighborhood-hunters. You can actually search for "trendy" or "clean" neighborhoods. Perhaps you want to live around liberals, or conservatives. Maybe you want to be near a farmers market, public transit, night life. Currently this company only does this for New York, Chicago, Boston and Los Angeles. More Cities are coming soon the company says.

Article from inmannews.com By Mary Umberg.