Hey, I was wondering what unwritten but tangible signs you look for when judging a neighborhood’s trajectory. Not the usual population growth or new developments – I mean stuff like a new independent coffee shop that offers five types of milk, or a pilates or padel club opening nearby
What small changes make you think, “this area’s about to shift”?
What are your unwritten signs a neighbourhood is gaining or losing value?
byu/obsn369 inRealEstate
Posted by obsn369
29 Comments
Probably easier to detect demographic shifts culturally than economically first, and usually in the other direction. Influxes of ‘lifted’ vehicles with extra-loud exhaust systems, for example.
My ex-wife used to judge neighborhoods by the distance to the nearest Mercedes dealer.
Nail salons and banks moving in
Pit bulls. If more and more pit bulls keep showing up then the place is going full ghetto
If it doesn’t have an HOA, it won’t retain value, or won’t accumulate value as fast as its HOA counter parts.
Eventually someone will start parking broken cars on the lawn or will start putting up chain link fences or won’t cut their grass at the same rate as everyone else
I look for new builds
New starbucks? Good sign.
Shutting down the old burger king to build a new one? Good Sign.
Burger King (or similar) shuts down and the building is for lease? The hood is on its way down.
It’s always worked for me
Oh, and I try not to judge a neighborhood by meaningless criteria thought up by entitled asshats.
From what I noticed living in a few areas you can tell a lot from the play parks. When there are no parents or the parents are sitting at the side disengaged then it’s lower class. When you see parents playing with their kids and other people’s kids as well chatting among parents then it’s middle class. When people are shouting at their kids that’s a bad sign
Then there is the quality of the park. Some broken equipment on concrete is bad. Well kept equipment with soft flooring etc is good. You don’t want to live in an area where people don’t even have the desire or ability to maintain such places
As a counter point I also don’t like too fancy areas. There the kids seem freaked out that another kids wants to play with them and they seem quite isolated with the helicopter parent. Generalisations of course but I have seen it a lot
Parks give a good idea of the direction since people tend to move when they have kids. So you often find the new entrants to the area rather than the people who lived there for 30 years already
If there is a non-Aldi supermarket nearby, look at the cart returns when the kids haven’t gone out to police up the parking lot in a while.
If there are a couple of carts just left randomly in the parking lot, but most have been returned to the cart returns, the neighborhood is probably pretty solid. People are looking out for their own neighborhood, there is a sense of community pride.
My cousin said that when you see fancy Jeeps in your neighborhood, it’s all over.
Starbucks…I’ve invested in many neighborhoods right before they “popped” in a good way and the opening of a Starbucks was usually an early sign that things were shifting towards good progress.
For decline, if major grocery stores or fast food restaurants close and nothing replaces them, that is a bad sign
Hate to say it, but demographics.
The upkeep on the lawns and exterior of the houses.
The more unkempt places start to look the more value is going down.
I usually use Starbucks but you can’t anymore !
Count the realtor signs. Not on houses, but the junk ones at intersections and on public spaces.
Once you start seeing these, you know two things– the people who live here stopped caring about their neighborhood, and enough people are moving out that they’re resorting to that trash to get attention to their sale.
Plywood, pitbulls, chain link fence, flags being flown that isn’t the country’s flag, empty lots, people hanging out a lot during typical work hours
Just look around at the neighborhood. Should be pretty apparent if it’s crappy or nice
BIG PICTURE,,
you have to do something I call God Mode.. that is imagine yourself miles up in the air, looking down on your area of interest.
It’s not what happens in the immediate area that will drive value up or down, but what is happening economically in the surrounding areas..
Are high value companies moving to the area, with good jobs. Medical centers opening up, custom coffee shops, bakeries, fine restaurants etc rather then just McDonald’s, Dunkin donuts and gas stations..
Are strip malls, liquor stores and check cashing outlets springing up…or high-end clothing stores, private book stores etc
It’s what surrounds and area that drives the economic engine
Checking the alleys behind the house is the instant reveal. The level of clean, well kept, even purposefully designed shows the level of what you’re dealing with in the neighborhood.
On the way way up:
Somewhat run-down neighborhood in a halfway decent location that has seen better days.
Suddenly you notice random houses being purchased by younger people who do low budget cleanup-fixup to make their house look better.
They start doing regular lawn maintenance and plant shrubs and flowers etc. If the street has long-time residents who have ‘given up’ on their neighborhood, after a while they might start to spruce up their places, too.
After a few years of slow improvement , the area gets the reputation of being ‘up and coming’.
Even if the houses look ‘fine’….
Look at the commercial areas. If you see things like closed Wendy’s or Burger Kings, empty stores in strip shopping centers and an abundance of ‘dollar’ stores, check cashing and ‘we buy gold’ stores you know the neighborhood is struggling.
The number of American cars vs foreign manufactured cars in driveways.
Here’s another one, if the convenience store in the neighborhood is generic.
OR if the CircleK/QT/etc. has a security guard.
The types of dogs people are walking in the neighbourhood
If a Costco is going in, the neighborhood is on an upswing and projected to stay that way for a while. Other smaller retailers/commercial properties can flex and change much more easily than a Costco ever will.
There’s a statistic link to how close the house is to a Whole Foods. I’m guessing other upscale groceries work as well. Bad signs are chain link fence, bars on windows, overgrown yards vs a nice area you’ll see full of landscaping trucks doing paid work. More fast food in an area is generally bad, like my zip code does not have a single drive through food place, there’s a walk in Dunkin but that’s it.
Bad signs – Plastic lawn furniture and toys. Chain link fences. Cars parked in the lawn. Fat people. Dollar General.
Good signs – Whole Foods. lululemon. life Time Fitness. Nannies walking kids.
If there is a liquor store close by, cant say without a doubt but usually, means that the neighborhood sucks
Track the number of grown men on children’s bikes