Crime is one of the top concerns for prospective buyers seeking to purchase a home. According to a survey conducted by Trulia.com, crime was the second greatest concern for home buyers (“’Crisis of Confidence’ – Good News for Qualified Buyers?,” Realty Times, Phoebe Chongchua, October 31, 2008).
Neighborhoodscout.com is a subscription service available by the one month to six month period at a price of $29.99 per month or $14.99 per month, respectively. In addition to crime statistics, subscribers also have access to school performance statistics and quarterly price appreciation statistics since 1990. Neighborhoodscout.com coverage area includes 17,000 law enforcement agency jurisdictions, which is far more expansive then crimereports.com.
One significant advantage of neighborhoodscout.com is a customizable reporting area. The user can find a neighborhood with an address search. Crime statistics can be provided for the area within 1- to 75-miles of the neighborhood.
Benchmarks of greater geographic areas are provided. The user selected neighborhood or area is shown against the city, metro area, state and national statistics. Because the statistics are an index score of one (least safe) to one hundred (most safe), an order of magnitude is easy to discern. For instance, if a city’s score is 64%, the city is safer than 64% of the cities in the US.
Thermal maps (see below) of crime propensity help the user quickly discern the relative safety of different neighborhoods in a city.
Added benefits of the subscription are school system index scores and home price appreciation trending since 1990.
- Map of City of Atlanta Neighborhood-Level Crime Rates from www.neighborhoodscout.com
A disadvantage of neighborhoodscout.com’s service is the inability to get the more detailed level of crime rates by type provided by crimereports.com. It also appears that crime reporting is on an annual basis and cannot be scaled down to a monthly or weekly reporting scale. However, both of these features are available on the free website interface at crimereports.com, if the neighborhood searched is within the coverage area.
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