What do you look for when driving around neighborhoods?

[Stephen Brown]

Hey BP!

Simple question: What do you look for when driving around neighborhoods? How would the neighborhood class change your criteria? I'm currently looking at an A neighborhood and a C neighborhood.

[Sammie J. Bell]

@Stephen Brown first I check out how the other homes and yards in the neighborhood look. Basically, do the homeowners take pride in the appearance of their homes? This can give you an overall idea of the mentality of the neighborhood since neatness and communal pride isn't exclusive to upper class neighborhoods. The house I just rented is in a B neighborhood with housing values ranging from 70k to 150k. Some blocks of the neighborhood were better than others, but the was a sense of community. Although there was occasional crime (i.e. break-ins, and a shooting once or twice), the residents of the neighborhood were generally good people and there was an active neighborhood association.   

Which brings me to my second point, ideally you would want a neighborhood with an active neighborhood association. This is an indication that you have like-minded individuals who want to protect their investment just as much as you want to protect yours. 

Next, I observe how many loiterers there are just hanging around at different times of the day, especially at night. In my opinion, a lot of people just "hanging around" during the day is an indicator that there may a high level of legal unemployment in the neighborhood which is a bad, bad sign. If you're looking at B and C neighborhoods, quiet streets during the day is a pretty good sign.  

I am a single woman and I generally don't look at places that I wouldn't feel comfortable living myself. So in a nutshell when I'm checking out neighborhoods, I ask myself if I would want to live in that area around those neighbors.    

I hope this helps!