Property Values

Do you know the impacts of crime in your area?

For five days I’ve been on Jury Service and encouraged to think about impacts of crime on neighborhoods and peoples’ life. It has been an eye opener because the link between crime and property value is not always obvious. When looking to buy or sell a house you need to know the reputation of the area you are in. Suburbs with frequent reports of violence, noise, grafitti and burglaries are not neighborhoods people choose from.

Property investors avoid them because of the negative impact of crime history on rental income and occupancy. If you as home buyer are not familiar with the surroundings but attracted to the seller’s price you need to take a look at the neighborhood. Not considering the crime history can cost you as house hunter thousands of Dollars when realizing you purchased in a risky neighborhood and want to resell. How do you deal with Property Values and Crime?

Information is king

We live in the computer age where innovation is moving forward so fast that the Internet became the main stream for getting information. Everyday new services appear on the Internet to support your decision making process as house hunter.

For example the police in UK launched a website for home owners to address and map crime hotspots. Services like that make home buyers increasingly picky and it has a direct impact on the purchase price, too. By using smart phones and pocket Internet devices you as house hunter have got such crime stats and localized information at your fingertips. The problem for home owners is the negative impact on property values when selling.

Everybody has now access to information to consider low-income areas with a higher crime rate and bad reputation remotely. For home owners and their communities can that be taken as signals for instability and neighborhood deterioration.

What can you do to tackle crime?

As home owner you can improve communities’ reputation by having an eye on the neighborhood and follow few tips;

· Contact your City Council about what they offer to make streets safer

· Start a neighborhood watch group

· Use video security, here information how we do that with very good results

· Maintain a list with neighbor’s contact details

Triggered by the recent Jury Service I would like to encourage you to assess your situation as home owner or house hunter. With sudden vandalism and graffiti tenants can move out this area, but you as home owner are in charge and possibly want to protect reputation and property values.

As house hunter do your homework on areas considered for buying into and

· check crime statistics,

· be careful when spotting a bargain in an area you are not familiar with

· Talk to people on the street, a bad decision can wipe off thousands of Dollars on house prices overnight.

Stay safe.

Klauster

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As house hunter and home owner how can you avoid crime hot spots resulting in property devaluation? How can you get crime statistics, information from the neighborhood and how to tackle crime?

Home Owner’s Blog