Good Neighborhood Research Tips

[Amy E.]

I wanted to poll the group about something.

I like to invest in neighborhoods where I would actually live.  I find I get better tenants that way.  One of the things I do to figure out if a neighborhood is worth a drive through is to look on Google Earth to see if there are pools in backyards.  I live in the south, and you can get a flimsy above ground pool for a couple hundred bucks (lower middle class neighborhood) and lots of folks have in-ground pools (upper middle class neighborhood).  Typically, the more pools (of either kind), the better the neighborhood.

But I just realized having a pool is probably not as common in northern areas (just saw a post about buying in Alaska....).  

So, what other things do you all look for when doing online research to determine if a particular neighborhood is "good" or not before you waste gas/time to see it in person.