As national crime rates rise, SAFETY is becoming more and more important for homeowners and buyers to understand. Be aware that the crime rates in your specific town or neighborhood can have a significant influence on home values. Also, these statistics can be very influential in a home buyers decision to relocate to a specific location. We have compiled a list of technology tools to help understand these statistics and help guide your decision making when it comes to buying or selling a home.
1. Best for checking crime in your state
The Federal Bureau of Investigation Crime Data Explorer compiles crime reports from all over the country. While the tool doesn’t portray crime mapping by address, you can find crime data for your state or a state you might want to move to in the future. The data is divided by crime type, including violent crime rate, hate crime, property crime, and arrests.
2. Best for getting a true idea of an area's overall safety
If crime is most important to you, AreaVibes is a great way to quickly and easily compare the crime activity in several cities. It breaks crimes down by type, number of reported incidents, and 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.
3. Best for connecting with your neighbors
The Neighbors App by Ring (known for its Ring doorbell cameras and Ring Alarm home security system) aims to be an online neighborhood watch program. You don’t have to be a Ring customer to use the app. It’s free to download and use no matter what security system or devices you own. Neighbors uses reports by people in your neighborhood and local law enforcement to alert you to suspicious activities and crime events in your area. You can also anonymously contribute your tips. Neighbors isn’t just a neighborhood crime app, though. Some neighborhoods use the app to band together and keep safe during natural disasters or organize neighborhood watches. You can also submit or look for information on lost pets.
4. Best for finding sex offenders
Family Watchdog maps the addresses of registered sex offenders in your neighborhood or near your child’s school. Just type a location or address into the website’s search box, and Family Watchdog generates a map pinpointing the address of nearby registered sex offenders. If you’re looking for a specific individual, you can search for them by name.
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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.
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You can sign up for alerts whenever a registered sex offender moves in or out of your neighborhood through the website. In addition to detailed information about offenders, this online tool offers personal safety tips, facts about sexual abuse, and a comprehensive blog and newsletter.
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Family Watchdog is a free service, but you’ll be sent off-site to a subscription service if you want detailed background reports about any offenders.
5. Best for specific crime data
CityProtect is an interactive neighborhood crime map that uses data from more than 1,000 participating law enforcement agencies. Search CityProtect by city, region, address, zip code, or law enforcement agency to see a map with icons identifying recent police activity. We like how specific this tool gets. Filters allow you to narrow your crime search by date range, day of the week, time of day, and incident type. With CityProtect, you can also sign up for periodic crime alerts, submit a tip, and register your home security camera.
6. Best user-friendly tool
SpotCrime maps crimes on-site and delivers crime alerts to your email. It gathers data from more than just law enforcement agencies. It also collects information from news reports and user tips. SpotCrime isn’t as robust as some of the other sites on our list, but we appreciate how user-friendly and highly visual it is, giving you a quick look at crime information in your neighborhood. Crimes are represented by icons that make it easy to see what activity takes place in your neighborhood. When you click on an icon, you get the crime title, when and where it took place, and a link that directs you to the source where the data came from.
Keep in mind many of these tools use crime statistics by address and don’t factor in a lot of things that make a neighborhood safe, so the results may be misleading. You don’t get a complete picture of how truly safe a neighborhood is. There are many things that can make a neighborhood safe:
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Good lighting at night
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Sidewalks and biking lanes
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A fire station nearby
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Fire hydrants that are close to homes
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Good schools
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Access to medical care
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Clean parks
Call a local realtor to get the complete picture. Realtors are your local experts and will be able to provide you with first hand knowledge. For the North of Boston market The Farrelly Group is your trusted source for all things real estate including SAFETY. Call us today and we will be able to help guide you through all your real estate needs and answer your questions (978)664-3700.
