SHOW NOTES FOR EPISODE 212: HOW TO RESEARCH PROPERTY CRIME STATISTICS

For any property purchase, it’s critical that you know the crime statistics of a potential neighborhood you are considering for investment.  After all, the safety of your tenants, the vulnerability of your property to vandalism and abuse, as well as the long-term impact to your property’s resale value, are fundamental to smart real estate investing. In this podcast episode, Bill examines this critical area and presents 10 invaluable tools you can use to access the safety of any potential neighborhood.

When you’re property-hunting, you probably won’t be able to rely on what your real estate agent or broker share regarding the safety information you need. The research of local crime and the general safety of potential neighborhoods will be up to you. The good news is, thanks to a handful of helpful website, like the ones that I’m featuring here, make it easy to find neighborhood crime statistics and even compare neighborhood safety ratings.

Fortunately, there are several online tools that can help you check neighborhood crime rates.  Whether you want to research crime statistics before you purchase or as it pertains to areas where you already invest, this information will be invaluable.

We’ve researched dozens of crime-tracking tools and chosen 10 that stand out from all the rest. Each website offers unique features that help you answer the million-dollar question, “Is my neighborhood safe?” I would encourage you to bookmark these websites, maybe even create a subfile in your bookmarks called “Crime Stats” and make it part of your regular due diligence research.

OK, let’s get started…

1. AreaVibes

AreaVibes helps you find the best places to live based on the factors you deem important.

Enter a state, city, neighborhood, or address into the AreaVibes.com search box and the website instantly plots the location on a map and provides you with its livability score between 1 and 100. The site also maps and ranks nearby areas according to their scores and compares your area’s livability score to state and national averages.  AreaVibes also assigns a letter grade from F to A+ for each location representing seven livability factors, one of which is crime.

AreaVibes’s custom search function sets it apart from similar tools, allowing you to sort locations by livability factors, such as crime, amenities, education, and housing.  If crime is most important to you, AreaVibes is a great way to quickly and easily compare the crime activity in several cities at once.  Not only that, it breaks crimes down by crime type, number of reported incidents, and the number of crimes per 100,000 people.  The site also provides statistics about the area’s crime trends and shows how it compares to state and national crime statistics.

AreaVibes is free to use.

2. NeighborhoodScout

NeighborhoodScout.com provides crime statistics and other important local data to help you decide if a neighborhood is right for you.

Using NeighborhoodScout, you can compare a neighborhood’s overall crime rate, violent crime rate, and property crime rate to the rates in other cities—as well as to the state and national average.  Users can also outline a specific crime search area, whether by the distance around a city or by miles from an address. Plus, NeighborhoodScout can tell you what the chances are of becoming a crime victim in a neighborhood, and compare that with the city and the state odds.

NeighborhoodScout allows you to create a custom search for your neighborhood.  You simply identify a community that meets your qualifications, and it will find comparable neighborhoods in any state you choose.

NeighborhoodScout charges a fee for detailed data and reports, but much of the information on the website is free.

3. FamilyWatchdog

FamilyWatchdog maps the addresses of registered sex offenders in your neighborhood.

Type a location or address into the website’s search box, and FamilyWatchdog generates a map pinpointing the address of nearby registered sex offenders. Color-coded icons correspond to various sex crimes, including crimes against children, sexual battery, and rape.  Click the icon and you’ll see a picture of the offender, learn their aliases, and find out what sex crime they’ve been convicted of.  If you’re looking for a specific individual, you can search for them by name.

Through the website, you can sign up to be alerted when a registered sex offender moves in or out of a key neighborhood.  In addition to detailed information about offenders, this online tool offers personal safety tips, facts about sexual abuse, and a comprehensive blog and newsletter.

FamilyWatchdog is a free service.

4. CrimeReports

CrimeReports maps crime data from more than 1,000 participating law enforcement agencies.

Users can search CrimeReports by region, address, zip code, or law enforcement agency name to see a map with icons identifying recent police activity.  You can narrow down the search area to a specific neighborhood and you will see icons that signify different types of crime.  When you click on an icon, you will reveal a range of details about the incident, including type, location, date, and time.  Filters allow you to narrow your crime search by date range, day of the week, time of day, and incident type.  With CrimeReports, you can also sign up for periodic crime alerts, submit a tip, and register your home security camera. 

If you zoom out of your neighborhood, CrimeReports will show you incident trends, which are easy-to-read graphs stating the number of crimes that have occurred in an area over the last fifteen days—broken down into violent crimes, property crimes, and quality-of-life crimes.

CrimeReports is free to use. 

5. SpotCrime

SpotCrime maps crimes and delivers crime alerts via email, Facebook, Twitter, and several other platforms.

SpotCrime gathers data from law enforcement agencies, news reports, and user tips to plot crimes. Crimes are represented by icons that make it easy to see what type of activity takes place in your neighborhood. For instance, vandalism is represented by a spray paint can and arson is noted by a flame.

Clicking the icon provides the crime title, when and where it took place, and a link that directs you to the source SpotCrime received the data from—typically, this is the law enforcement agency that handled the incident.  Additionally, you can search SpotCrime by state and follow links to a city’s crime maps, most-wanted page, and daily crime reports.

SpotCrime isn’t as robust as some of the other sites on our list, but we appreciate that it’s user friendly and highly visual, giving the viewer a quick look at crime in their neighborhood.  Plus, it allows users to report a crime or crime tip anonymously.

SpotCrime is free.

6. National Sex Offender Public Website

Whether you’re researching potential investments or just want to know more about your own personal neighborhood, you’ll want to get familiar with this site. The National Sex Offender Public Website (NSOPW) is the only U.S. government site that identifies sex offenders from state, territorial, and tribal registries together. You’ll only need to do one search to have all the information you need about sex offenders.

This is a free service and you can search the database by name, address, zip code, county or city to discover data about convicted sex offenders living, working and attending schools in the area you are researching. The site also offers valuable information about sexual abuse.  Since The National Center for Victims of Crime stated that “1 in 5 girls and 1 in 20 boys is a victim of child sexual abuse,” this is an important tool to use to keep your own kids out of harm’s way.

7. MyLocalCrime

This is very similar to Spotcrime and allows users to input their addresses to find a chronology of recent crimes in their area.  Theft, shooting, burglary, assault, robbery, arrest, and “other” are all categories the site uses to show what’s happening nearby.  If you click on any incident, you’ll be able to get a quick description of the crime.  For instance, an arrest might say “drunk driving” or “drug possession: heroin.”  These details are important to know.

Unlike Spotcrime where users can report crimes, this data is all pulled from police reports and news sources. Consider it a crime ticker that you can check in on to make sure your neighborhood is safe.

8. CrimeMapping.com

Developed by The Omega Group, this website reports on local crimes through original research. Priding itself on not “scraping” data from other websites, it uses an advanced mapping system, ESRI, and partnerships with local police departments to pull current crime data right from the source.

In order for crimes to be reported to CrimeMapping.com, police departments need to be subscribed to the website, so if they’re not, you won’t be able to read about it on the site.

However, one major upside to CrimeMapping.com is that you can sign up for crime alerts with your email and customize your settings.  Choose an address and set up a perimeter to see crimes within one, two, or even 20 miles from home. Even select the types of crimes you’re interested in viewing, for example fraud, sex crimes, arson, vandalism, disturbing the peace, and more.  There is a special category for sex offender information that will provide you with a list of sex offenders in your area since this is a large safety concern that requires special attention.

9. RAIDS Online

Both the public and police contribute to this crime aggregator website. To see what’s going on nearby, you can select from a highly detailed list of crimes (like homicide, death investigation, vehicle theft, etc.).  Users may view information on a computer or by downloading the app to your smart device.  You can also sign up for crime alerts to your email so you’ll know right away of potential danger near you.

This crime map doesn’t have every city listed in its dropdown.  For instance, if you’re looking for Salt Lake City, you can input the address, but you won’t be able to “jump to that city” in the dropdown or see events that are immediately close to you. It doesn’t seem to be as sensitive as other similar crime reporting websites, but it’s there for you to use nonetheless.

And our final site…

10. CitizenCOP

This is a really cool app you might just want to add to your personal smart phone.  It not only reports on crime, but has a number of other safety features as well.  First, it allows users to report crimes through video, image, or audio clips.  It lets you call the police and send automatic help messages if you’re in danger too.

If you have kids, you can have them download this CitizenCOP app on their phones and set up a “safe zone” perimeter so you’ll be alerted if they travel outside of your designated safe zone.  That way, you’ll know where they are and can protect them better.

CitizenCOP even has additional consumer protection features like a cab fare estimator and vehicle background check to keep you from being overcharged for a fare (not sure if Uber and Lyft are included) or from buying a stolen vehicle.  It really is a modern and comprehensive safety app that goes above and beyond the typical crime mapping website.

In Conclusion

If you’re a serious investor and you want tools to help you make the best investment decisions, these tools can really help.  However, keep in mind, they’re only going to be able to give you the “recorded” statistical information.   It’s important that, in addition, that you get out on location and personally scout out the area yourself.  Check out the streets during the week, at night, early in the morning, and on weekends.  Carefully track local activities, patterns and suspicious events.  See how you feel walking around.

Once you’ve done that as well as compared your experience to detailed crime data online, you’ll be in a better position to make the right decision about the safety and investability of the area you are considering.

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