Moving into a new home can be as scary as it is exciting. For starters you’ve presumably just spent a significant amount of money considering the median sale price of a non-distressed home was $136,000 in 2015. After you’ve finished all the paperwork and procedures with the realtors it’s time to start thinking about the specifics of your new piece of real estate.
One of the first things you should be concerned about is whether or not it’s in a safe neighborhood. Hopefully you will have taken this into consideration before you made an offer, but regardless once you’ve bought it and moved in you have to determine for sure. Here are three things to look for in a safe neighborhood.
1.) Presence of Children: Typically, one of the things common among safe neighborhoods is the presence of children. If the majority of parents in the area are trusting and comfortable with letting their kids play outside without constant supervision it’s a good indication there hasn’t been many abductions or gang shoot-outs lately.
2.) Suspicious Activity: This can best be defined using the threshold of U.S. Supreme Court Justice Potter Stewart of obscenity, “I know it when I see it.” It doesn’t take a police investigator to take a stroll around the block and see/sense whether things are, at least on the surface on the up-and-up. Introduce and familiarize you and your family to community leaders and organizations like the local neighborhood watch if they have one.
3.) Retiree Population: There are just over 40 million Americans age 65 and older that make up 13% of the population and by 2030 the over-65 crowd will reach 20% of the population. A strong elderly/retiree population tells you two things. The first, that there will generally be a lot of people around during the day to keep an eye on things. By definition a retiree usually doesn’t have a job, which means they’ll be spending a lot of time relaxing at home that might be able to see if anyone starts breaking into your house while no ones at home. The other is that retirees like to live in a quiet place, which safe neighborhoods tend to be.
This of course all goes with the understanding that you’ve done your homework looking up statistics and information on the area. Once you’ve done those things these are the types of things you can look for in real-life that can say a lot about a neighborhood. Research more here.