The Lawhead Team would like to share the latest One Cool Thing about choosing the right neighborhood for your next home:

In the third quarter of 2018, home buyers were asked what they take into consideration when choosing a new neighborhood, the importance of highly ranked schools and the number of homes available for sale in their neighborhood.

Here’s what home buyers consider when choosing a neighborhood:

• 25% want to be in close proximity to friends and family.
• 24% would like to be in close proximity to job and short commute.
• 20% of home buyers would like their new home to be close to their school of choice.
• 6% would like their new home to be close to parks, trails and dog parks.
• 6% would also like to be close to entertainment, activities, restaurants and shopping.
• 3% would like to have access to walk to various locations of choice.
• 3% would like access to public transportation.
• 14% non/other.

Source: National Association of Realtors.

The neighborhood your home is in is very important. Not just for you while you are living there but for potential buyers when you go to sell your home.

The Lawhead Team would like to share the latest from the California Association Of Realtors’ One Cool Thing:

What Do You Want In A Neighborhood?

There are several things that are important to home buyers when selecting their neighborhood. Here is a list of the most common from the NAR’s National Community Preference Survey:

• 68% said they want their neighborhood to have easy access to the highway.
• 65% said they want their neighborhood to have public transportation within walking distance of their home.
• 66% said they want an established neighborhood with older homes and mature trees.
• 65% would like their neighborhood be close to their place of employment, allowing them to have a short commute to work.
• 74% said they want high quality public schools in their neighborhood.
• 86% said they want privacy from neighbors in the home they buy.
• 66% said they want to live in a community with people of all stages of life.
• 80% said they want their neighborhood to have sidewalks and places to take walks.
• 55% said they want to live in a place that is away from it all.
• 69% said they want their neighborhood to be walking distance to places like schools and shops.

The Lawhead Team would like to share a recent article from Realtor.com about choosing the right neighborhood for your new home.

Any good Realtor will share the mantra, “location, location, location” when talking to you about what attributes help a home hold onto its value and potentially appreciate. However, no one neighborhood is right every buyer. Determining which community meets your needs and your budget requires research and some soul searching about your priorities.

Establish your priorities – Before a Realtor can begin to help you look for a home, you (and your spouse or partner) should develop a list of needs and wants. For some buyers, the home itself is of paramount importance: they want a particular style or size or a big yard. For others, the neighborhood is more important. If you have an unlimited budget you may be able to find the perfect home in a desirable neighborhood, but since most buyers need to meet a budget, you may have to compromise on either the house or the community.

Next, think about what amenities you’d like to have nearby or whether you’d like to live in a rural area without neighbors. If you like to swim or golf or play soccer or your kids do, facilities for those sports should be on the list of things you look for in a neighborhood. On the other hand, you could be more focused on easy access to cultural amenities or nightlife. Think about whether you’d like to live in place where residents interact often or whether you prefer to have cordial but distant relationships with your neighbors.

Schools matter – even if you don’t have kids. If you have children or are planning to have a family in the future, buying a home in a community with good schools is already likely to be a priority. Even if you don’t have children to educate, though, you should be aware that homes located in a good school district typically hold onto their value better than those in less highly regarded districts. In fact, Redfin real estate company completed a nationwide study in 2013 that shows that Americans pay $50 per square foot more for homes served by a top-ranked school than for homes served by an average-ranked school.

The Fair Housing Act prevents Realtors from providing information directly to buyers about specific schools, but they can share links to websites that rate schools and to local school systems.

Transportation issues – A major consideration for most home buyers when it comes to choosing where to live is how they’ll get to the places they go regularly. In communities near or in a city, prime locations are typically close to public transit options. Many suburban communities are being designed around a “town center” concept so that residents can walk to restaurants, shops and entertainment and sometimes even to work.

When you’re looking for a home, you should consider how convenient it is for you and for future potential buyers when you’re ready to sell.

Homes that are located close to a subway station or to popular commuter routes are often more costly than those that require a longer commute to a city center, so ask your Realtor to show you areas that may have similar attributes but are less expensive. Alternatively, if living in a particular neighborhood is your number one priority, you may need to compromise in terms of the size home you buy or its condition.

How to compare communities – It’s important to visit a prospective neighborhood at various times of day and on both weekdays and weekends to get a feel for what it would be like to live there. Look at how the homes are maintained to see if they meet your standards. Try to talk to residents about what the community is like and test out your commute at the time of day you typically go to work.

Finding the right neighborhood takes some legwork, but it’s important to choose a place to live where you want to come home every night.

Article from Realtor.com – http://www.realtor.com/advice/how-to-choose-the-right-neighborhood/

When you are looking to buy a home it is important to scope out the neighborhood your future home will be in.  Below are some tips to making sure you thoroughly do your new home’s neighborhood research:

HOA Rules and Regulations.  You might want to build a tall fence for backyard privacy, plant a food garden in your front yard or have bees, goats or other light livestock on your property – but your city’s regulations may or may not allow these things, depending on the zoning of your neighborhood. Similarly, you might want to paint your home a shade that isn’t allowed by the HOA rules, or have more cars than your desired home has “legal” parking spaces – HOA regulations may even go so far as to ban exterior satellite dishes, pets and even some internal home improvements.

Read the HOA rules and regulations disclosed by your next home’s seller very, very thoroughly to understand any such limitations before you buy. And if you’re considering any sort of urban farming or have plans to make major changes to the exterior of your home after closing, you might want to contact the city building and planning department before you remove your contingencies, to see what would and would not be involved in making those changes to that home.

Future Developments. Many states require that sellers disclose any manufacturing, commercial, airport or industrial zones that currently exist near the property. What is less clear to most buyers is the equally important issue of whether there are any proposals currently being considered by the powers that be that would create new zones that fall into these categories – proposals that could very well uptick the traffic, noise, odors and pollution that you’ll have to deal with in the home as time goes on. You should feel free to ask the seller flat out, but here’s where a call to the city and a plain old Google search for the neighborhood names and cross streets can also be helpful, to turn up news reports of relevant proposals and permit requests.  Ask your agent for guidance on other local sources you might be able to tap into.

Special Assessments by the HOA. HOA’s can impose special assessments to cover building and common area repairs and upgrades. And some cities,districts, neighborhoods and states vote in special assessments that are added onto local homeowners’ property tax bills for things like first responder services, street lighting, supplemental school funding and the like. Once these things have already been imposed, they are disclosed through title and HOA disclosures, but it’s best to know about them when they’re coming down the pike.

Reviewing the disclosed HOA reserves and financials – as well as recent newsletters and Board meeting minutes – can hip you to upcoming special assessments before they take effect, and paying attention to (or researching) recent local ballot measures can do the same for the governmental special assessments.

Neighborhood Crime. Crime rates are essential indicators of neighborhood desirability, although blanket labels of ‘safe’ vs. ‘dangerous’ neighborhoods are outdated and unhelpful, when it comes to directing a house hunt. Most buyers familiar with their towns know on a basic level whether a neighborhood has a reputation for being safe or being crime-riddled. Further, if you are buying on a budget that strictly limits your overall neighborhood options, the black-and-white, safe-or-not dichotomy does nothing to help you make more nuanced decisions about your house hunt.

Now, though, buyers have open access to crime report databases that previously could only be accessed via tedious, time-consuming and generally infeasible hours spent flipping through police records down at the station. And the availability of these records online has empowered much more sophisticated and meaningful ways of sorting this data, for the purposes of the average home buyer.

Social Events. Savvy buyers might like to know whether their neighborhoods have social amenities like block parties, newsletters, email lists, homeowner resources for vendors like child care and handyman services, and even neighborhood-specific social networks:

• Review any HOA disclosures (if relevant), which may contain newsletters and other social information
• Ask your home’s seller and/or the homeowner’s association (HOA) management company,
• Google your neighborhood’s name and peruse the results.

Technological and communications capabilities.  When you’ve lived in one spot for a number of years, it’s easy to take your area’s technological capabilities for granted. For instance your provider(s) cell networks and reception capabilities (including 3G and 4G networks) might allow for incredible reception where you live, but not in another neighborhood across town. In fact, if you’re moving from a an urban area to a more rural one, you might be surprised at how spotty or non-existent cell service still is in some areas. In the same vein, many areas across the country are still waiting for the broadband and fiber optic cable infrastructure development that will allow residents to tap into digital television, phone and internet services.

Technological capabilities – or the lack thereof – are unlikely to be a deal-breaker if you’re planning to buy a home, but they are something that might help you prioritize among multiple neighborhoods or homes you’ve been considering.  Getting up to speed on what’s available can help you understand what additional changes you might have to make – and charges you might incur for making them – to optimize your technologies and services once you move. Contact your cell, cable, phone and internet providers to determine what’s available in your neighborhood-to-be; many of the major mobile carriers also have voice, data, 3G and 4G network coverage maps on their websites.