How to Choose a Neighborhood for Your Home Search

While you can fall in love a particular home, where that home is located will greatly effect your quality of life, the home's value, and your return on investment.  Narrow your home search by identifying neighborhoods that are right for you. This helps keep your search focused and efficient. Your REALTORŪ can offer neighborhood information to guide you in your search.

When evaluating a neighborhood you should investigate local conditions. Depending on your own particular needs and tastes, some of the following factors may be more important considerations than others:

  • location desirability in overall market (important for eventual resale)
  • proximity to locations of value to you (work, school, highways, family, etc.)
  • property values
  • crime rate
  • quality of schools
  • traffic
  • future construction potential
  • proximity to schools, employment, hospitals, shops, public transportation, prisons, freeways, airports, beaches, parks, stadiums and cultural centers such as museums and theaters

Neighborhood Search Strategies

Regardless of your financial resources, it's wise to buy a home that meets your primary needs in the best neighborhood that fits within your price range. You can maximize your home purchase location by incorporating some of the following strategies into your neighborhood search:

  • Assess the "Feel": Drive the neighborhood you're considering and look at the types of homes in it.  Is this where you could see yourself living?  Is it just your house you like or the whole neighborhood?  Are you OK with being next to train tracks or near the airport?  How long does it take you to get to the places you normally go?
  • Do a "stake-out": Take an afternoon/evening, a friend, and a thermos and stake out the neighborhood you are considering.  Does it feel as safe at night as it did during the day?  Do you like that there are children playing in the cul-de-dac on weekends?  Is this the kind of place where everyone parks on the street and in their driveway?
  • Neighborhood demand: Look at the neighborhood demand by asking your real estate agent for appreciation statistics about the area, whether the gap between the list price and sale price is increasing/decreasing, and what is selling/has sold currently.
  • Consider "up and coming" neighborhoods: Look for communities that will continue to be or are likely to become "hot neighborhoods" in the coming years. They can often be discovered on the periphery of the most continuously desirable areas.  Check for planned future development such as additional transit, new community services such as pools and theatres, and chain stores planning to move in.