When people are planning a big move to a new neighborhood or a new investment in a property in an unfamiliar area, they often want to research the location to find out if it is likely to be a good fit for their needs. From researching schools to researching crime rates, tenants looking for rentals and others looking to buy are going to look for these statistics.
As a landlord and property investor, you need to be aware of the type of information that your potential buyers and tenants are going to be looking at!
If you plan to buy a property to rent in a new neighborhood, understanding what a potential tenant will see when looking at your property is an invaluable way to decide if it is a good investment option.
One site that many property investors and landlords use to do this type of research is NeighborhoodScout. NeighborhoodScout reviews make it clear that there is an abundance of information on the site, but it is up to you to decide if the data they gather is helpful for your needs!
Reviews of NeighborhoodScout, like the one you are reading right now, can ensure that you get a complete picture of what the service offers. Read along to find out if this site could be a beneficial one for your real estate needs!
A Table Of Contents Of NeighborhoodScout Reviews
- Rating Of NeighborhoodScout
- NeighborhoodScout Review
- Complete Site Analysis of NeighborhoodScout
- Products Offered By NeighborhoodScout
- Word Of Warning: Know The Laws
- Where To Buy Access
Rating Of NeighborhoodScout
Today, NeighborhoodScout has earned a 5 out of 5-star rating.
NeighborhoodScout Review
No tool that you use when managing your real estate investment business is going to be perfect. Still, there are a lot of sites out there that can offer so much data and information that they earn a 5/5 star rating. Today, NeighborhoodScout has joined that group of sites.
The site gives free visitors and paid members a wide variety of useful information about neighborhoods around the country. This data may include crime states, school info, appreciation values, and more. While much of this information can be gathered from other sources, that is a very time-consuming process, and NeighborhoodScout does the work.
All-in-all, the insights provided by NeighborhoodScout can be put to good use by most investors and landlords, no matter what your range, budget, or property type may be. The key is figuring out the best way to make the info work for improving your business!
Pros
- Match tool can help you find a similar new neighborhood
- Great value for a report or subscription cost
- Lots of data available in one place, including crime ratings, demographic data, school ratings, and more
- Neighborhood-level statistics
- Improves the ability to find new investment areas
Cons
- Subscription required to access detailed data
- Some data sources may be unreliable at times
- Not all neighborhoods have the same amount of data
Complete Site Analysis Of NeighborhoodScout
Now that you have an overview of what has drawn landlords like you to seek out reviews of Neighborhood Scout in the past, it’s time to deep dive into more details about what this interesting service has to offer your business.
While the main goal of this service is to get businesses the information that they need about specific locations in order to make decisions, for landlords, this might be about choosing their next rental location or deciding what type of price point will be appropriate based on the area’s characteristics. The goal is to find out if the neighborhood is right for your business.
Compare Statistic Rates
If you are already in the rental and investment business, you are aware of what types of neighborhoods you have had the most success in. You may be looking to expand your business, but you aren’t sure what area to head into next.
One of the greatest features of NeighborhoodScout is that you can measure the rates of one neighborhood with those of other neighborhoods as well as with the state and national averages. This can be very beneficial.
How You Might Use This Tool
There are many ways that this tool might help you to make decisions about your properties; this is just one example.
Let’s say that you have a property in Neighborhood A, and you have had very good success with finding good tenants and keeping high occupancy rates. You want to get another property in a similar area but aren’t sure where that might be. By typing in the property address, you can pull up neighborhoods that have the same characteristics as your property’s neighborhood.
This type of comparison tool can be invaluable for finding the next investment that will help your business grow!
Custom Search Feature
Another similar feature exists on NeighborhoodScout. It is possible for you to use a filter to choose all of the characteristics that you are looking for, and the site will load up neighborhoods in your search area that match those characteristics.
The filters that you can use are not limited to just crime; you can include things like schools, demographics, home evaluations, specific types of crime rates, and more when trying to create your ideal neighborhood filter. To include many of these filters, a subscription is required.
Detailed Reports
If you aren’t looking to compare one neighborhood to another and are instead curious about a specific neighborhood, NeighborhoodScout has benefits for you, too.
The site allows you to enter an address, and then, it generates a report on the most important factors that it has gathered. These factors may include:
- Overall crime rates
- Property crime rates
- Violent crime rates
- School ratings
- Home appreciation values
These aren’t the only areas that you may be able to learn more about, but it is important to note that not all of these factors are available when accessing the site for free. If you want complete data, you will want to use the subscription version of NeighborhoodScout to ensure your data is complete.
Data Collection
One of the most common concerns that people have when they are looking into using this type of software is whether or not it is going to deliver accurate data.
As with any site that aggregates a wide variety of data into one tool, the data is going to have some margin of error. Depending on the growth and changes happening in the area, the data might be more or less accurate.
Though the data may not always be 100% accurate, the founder of NeighborhoodScout has a huge interest in creating a truly valuable tool for investors and landlords, and that passion says something about the project.
Data Example
One common example is in areas that are rapidly changing from abandoned and run-down into new businesses and homes. These areas are not always accurately represented by the data gathered because of the speed of the changes, but the reports provided on NeighborhoodScout can still help.
When you find data that reflects unexpected crime or value statistics in comparison to what you see in the neighborhood, this could be a sign that the neighborhood is going through an upswing. And for many landlords, that would be an ideal time to invest in the area as well!
Ultimately, it is up to you to decide how to use the data and to understand that there is always going to be some degree of error. The key isn’t to have 100% accurate data, but to use the data that you do have in beneficial ways.
Products Offered By NeighborhoodScout
As mentioned, there are some tools available at the free level, and some are only available with a subscription. Regardless of whether or not you are a paid member of the site, there are three main tools:
- Reports
- Match
- Create
Take a look at each of these tools and what types of features may be available to you with those tools.
Reports
The report feature gives you a detailed snapshot of real estate, crime, school, demographics, trends, and forecasts for a specific address. Very little of this information is available on the free version of the site, but a single report can be purchased on the site without needing to buy a subscription.
Monthly subscriptions to the site include a preset number of reports, ranging from 10 to 200 per month depending on what level you subscribe to the site at.
Match Your Neighborhood
The next feature of the site is the match feature. Using this tool, you can find comparable neighborhoods to that of an entered address.
The free version of this tool allows you to see similar neighborhoods within five miles of a specific city or area; higher subscription levels allow you to make more adjustments to the range and area that you compare to.
Create Your Ideal Neighborhood
Finally, you can use the Create tool to find your ideal investment neighborhood without entering a starting neighborhood to compare to. While this tool can be used in the free version, most of the useful features of the tool are only available with one of the pro or elite level subscriptions.
If you are subscribed to the site as a pro member, you can make full use of this tool’s power. You can filter many different categories to find your ideal investment area:
- Real estate trends
- Ownership rates
- Median home value
- Average market rent
- Crime rates
- Income
- Demographics
- Schools
The power of having detailed data about all of these areas is unmistakable. With information like this and the ability to filter and select neighborhoods for investment that fit with your business plan, you can grow with a higher success rate than ever before.
Word Of Warning: Know The Laws
Before you finish reading today’s NeighborhoodScout review, there are a few important things that you need to be sure to keep in mind while running your business.
As you know, there are a number of anti-discrimination and equal opportunity laws in effect when it comes to rental applications, choosing tenants, and renting out properties. Additionally, there are some laws that restrict properties from being marketed for being in a “low crime neighborhood.”
Let’s be clear about something: it is within your rights to research a neighborhood before you purchase any property there. Using a tool like NeighborhoodScout gives you information that is yours to learn.
The key is that you cannot use certain terminology to market your rental property or property for sale, and you must not use any type of demographic information to choose one tenant over another. Most landlords have a good grasp on this information, but in the context of a tool like NeighborhoodScout, a reminder can be helpful.
Always be sure to follow Fair Housing Laws, and you will be good to rent without fear!
Where To Buy Access
As mentioned a few times previously, NeighborhoodScout can be used as a free service with limited data, or you can buy a subscription to gain more complete data. Subscriptions can all be purchased at different price points on the NeighborhoodScout website, with complete details of the unique and varied pricing plans here.
Pro Lite Plan
This basic subscription plan gives you access to 10 Pro reports per month.
Pro Plan
This Pro plan gives you access to 100 Pro reports per month as well as access to fully unlock the Match My Neighborhood and Create Your Ideal Neighborhood tools. Additionally, you will be able to do nationwide searches.
Pro Plus Plan
The next level, the Pro Plus plan, proves 200 Pro reports per month as well as access to the fully unlocked Match My Neighborhood and Create Your Ideal Neighborhood tools. Just as you can do with the Pro Plan, you will be able to do nationwide searches.
Pro Team
If you run a large-scale business with a technology team or you have the ability to work with the API directly, it is possible to contact NeighborhoodScout to set up your own pricing plan depending on what type of data you want to have bulk files and API access for.
Conclusion
You’re a smart landlord, and you want to do everything that you can to continue to grow your business. To do that, it might be beneficial to have more data about properties that you are considering adding to your portfolio.
Landlords that like to gather supporting data when researching their next property investment can truly benefit from the comprehensive data packaging that NeighborhoodScout offers. Even if you are only thinking about buying one property or just getting very basic statistics, the free version of the site can bring you some interesting information.
With the right data, you can even make some unique decisions that get you ahead of other landlords in your area.
NeighborhoodScout reviews are not a guarantee of this tool’s performance, but they can provide some major assistance in understanding how the tool works. With that information, you can decide for yourself if this tool will be a game-changer or not!