@TATYANA DALI
I know the east side of Cleveland fairly well so I'll chime in here.
South Collinwood and Harvard really aren't all that close to each other. North and South Collinwood are east side neighborhoods that are up north along the like and border Euclid, an inner ring suburb. Harvard sometimes refers to a neighborhood (AKA Lee - Harvard or Lee - Miles) that's on the south east part of Cleveland. It'd probably take you 25 - 30 minutes to drive from one neighborhood to the other. Harvard is also a major street that runs deep into the city and out into the suburbs.
South Collinwood can be okay, but parts of it are a little bit rougher too. North Collinwood is the Collinwood neighborhood that has more buzz about revitalization because of the Waterloo Arts District area. For either Collinwood neighborhood, you want to stay away from the suburb of East Cleveland as much as possible and you also want to make sure that you're not in an area that's more like the Forest Hills or Glenville neighborhoods that have more crime and blight and can be more challenging. Staying north of the highway and east of E 156 is preferable and its even better to be as close as possible to either Waterloo or E 185th.
My general impression of the neighborhoods around Harvard is areas in the E 150s blocks and higher are mostly stable, around the E 140s blocks is a little bit rougher but still workable, and the areas in much lowered numbers then that can be a lot more challenging.
Earlier this week I was looking at a package of properties on behalf of an out of town investor that I work with. One was on a street slightly north of Harvard near E 147th. I asked a friend and longtime resident of the south east neighborhoods of Cleveland and he described that area as "an okay area. not the best but definitely not the worst". My personal observations of the area matched his description and my general impression that I held.
Another of the properties was on E 149th in Collinwood north of St Clair. There was some mild blight, meaning a couple of vacant and boarded up properties but most properties in the area appeared to be reasonable stable and well maintained. I wouldn't disqualify either of these properties based on location and neighborhood.
A - F grades are meaningless without some sort of scale, but I can't imagine any reasonable calibrated scale would have those areas grading out as a "B" neighborhood. However, the right streets in those areas could be "C" neighborhoods. Just be careful, especially if you're not local, because there are "D" and "F" caliber streets in the immediate areas as well and there's no real good way to tell this remotely. Also, check the post by @James Wise where he grades Cleveland area neighborhoods. Just keep in mind he's looking at zip code level data with his west side eyes, and he doesn't know the east side neighborhoods down to a street by street level. Many of these areas, at a zip code level, are "D" or "F" areas but have individual pockets within them that are "C" grade areas with good potential return on investment.
