DoorFly.com: How to Check For a Safe Neighborhood

I learned an important tip the other night at CIREIA (Central Indiana Real Estate Investors Association). The speaker was providing home buying advice for areas around Indianapolis. He started talking about ways to determine if the neighborhood you’re looking to purchase property in is safe. Here was his most interesting piece of advice on this subject…

Drive through the neighborhood at dusk and pay close attention to the pedestrians walking the sidewalk. If woman are present (not with men), than chances are good the neighborhood is fairly safe.

I thought this was good advice. Quite often, especially in the Indianapolis metropolitan area, it can be difficult to grasp how safe the neighborhood is. The point the speaker was trying to make is most women have a good sense of safety and usually know when and how to keep them selves out of harms way. I would think the same goes for children. You would think parents would keep their children off the streets if the neighborhood cannot be trusted.

Here are some additional facts I found on ehow.com for determining if a neighborhood is safe:

Watch the roads when it comes to where they are located and how much traffic goes by.
Most people assimilate safety with robbers and break-ins but it can also relate to how many fast cars are racing by the very place your children play each day. If possible, stick with cul-de-sac’s and roads with minimal amounts of traffic.

Surf the web for information on just how many registered offenders are living in your neighborhood.
Offenders are required by law to tell the state exactly where they are living and working. While offenders won’t always violate the law a second time, many families and parents are not ready to take the risk. Visit websites geared to located registered criminals to determine where clustered groups are living.

Check with the nearby schools to determine how closely they work with law enforcement. Many schools team up with authorities and work with youngsters to make them more aware of strangers or bad situations. The more present the law is in your neighborhood, the more it can deter bad situations or people looking to cause trouble.

Call the local authorities and ask them for statistics.
Find out how many break-ins or robberies have happened in that area for the last year. Ask about minor infractions and major ones as well–anything from car theft to murder should be on your list. Most law enforcement agencies can either give you the information directly or send you to someone who can answer your questions.

Find out if there is a Neighborhood Watch in place for the area in question.
When neighbors are keeping an extra eye on things and would-be criminals are aware of it, the authorities won’t have to be called because they tend to stay away.

Source: How to Know if a Neighborhood is Safe – By eHow Home&Garden Editor

Once you’ve determined a good neighborhood, than it’s time to find a real estate agent. Indiana real estate agents can be easily located on Doorfly.com’s Agent Directory. By using DoorFly, you can locate a qualified real estate agent and negotiate the real estate agent fees. By obtaining a portion of the real estate agent commission, you can earn some extra cash at closing to help with upfront new home expenses.

Please check back soon as I will be blogging on home selling advice as well.