How to identify A,B,C,D and F areas in Hockessin and Wilmington

[Buyan Thyagarajan]

Hi,

I am trying to identify B,C,D and F type regions in Red clay school district area in Delaware. I am looking for regions around Wilmington and Hockessin . Can you guys let me know how to identify these regions easily?

Buyan

[James Masotti]

Originally posted by @Buyan Thyagarajan:

Hi,

I am trying to identify B,C,D and F type regions in Red clay school district area in Delaware. I am looking for regions around Wilmington and Hockessin . Can you guys let me know how to identify these regions easily?

Buyan

 My answer to this isn't going to be one that you'll like. 

Simple answer: It's not easy

More complicated answer: A and F areas you can find pretty quickly just by looking at sold prices. The highest prices are the A areas and the lowest prices are the F areas. In the middle...there's a lot more going on to influence values. You'll have to take a lot more advantage of the websites trulia (crime mapping), city-data.com for all sorts of census information. Then I also recommend City of Wilmington Policy Department website where they publish monthly crime statistics by police jurisdiction. Everyone is also going to define these things slightly differently. I invest in what I would call C areas of Wilmington. I'm fine with this...other people think I invest in the hood and would never touch where my properties are. So this whole business of trying to perfectly classify areas by A/B/C/D/F is really very subjective and I think misleading. The more important questions are really what sort of tenants do you want, what sort of rent ratio, what sort of opportunity for appreciation. At the heart of it that's what these A/B/C/D/F scales often try to mimic...some people add to that age and condition of property...but I don't think that applies in a place like Wilmington as much where you have tons of old houses everywhere...with sporadic newer builds...just because you have some new townhouses in the hood though doesn't automatically make it a better place to be or justify the higher property cost.