Learning about your new neighborhood can be a challenge, whether you’re doing preliminary research or just trying to get situated after moving. Luckily, there are a handful of great resources available online that can help. We’ve done a deep dive into the best ones available and compiled them here to help you know about your city. The websites listed below all provide slightly different information from schools to crime to general neighborhood information.
Nextdoor.com – Nextdoor is a free social network based around neighborhoods that can be used to ask questions, discuss community issues, find local events, and generally help create a dialogue around relevant issues that may be of interest to those living around you.
Neighborhoods.com – A website that helps people find the best neighborhood and real estate in specific areas. There’s also a tool that helps you find the best place to live based on criteria determined from a short questionnaire.
Walk Score – Walk Score provides information about how pedestrian and bike friendly certain towns are, as well as other helpful data relative to specific neighborhoods. In addition to pedestrian information, there’s also data about real estate, rentals and neighborhood restaurants.
Livability.com – If you’re unsure of where you’d like to move, Livability.com has resources to help you determine the best city for you. The site has several articles about affordable places to live and demographics for cities and metro areas throughout the United States.
AreaVibes – AreaVibes is a website that ranks cities based a number of criteria that include crime, cost of living, education, employment rate, cost of living, housing and weather. All the categories are combined into a total score that represents the livability of each city based on the scores in each category.
City Data – City Data is a website that has loads of helpful information about cities that spans demographics, schools, neighborhoods, tax assessments of properties. There’s also a forum where you can questions of locals and get information directly from people that live in the city or region you’re considering.
Best Places – Like other websites on this list, you’ll find plenty of data about different neighborhoods and cities, but there’s also a short quiz that helps you determine the area or city that is your best match. There’s also information that helps you compare cost of living in different cities.
Census.gov Factfinder – The website for the U.S. Census Bureau has up to date statistics about demographics, housing, income, education, businesses and a host of other relevant information for cities across the United States. The “Guided Search” feature may be particularly helpful if you’re moving to a part of the Bay Area that you’re unfamiliar with or want to know more about.
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Local & Neighborhood School & Safety Ratings
Crime Reports – A website where you can search reported crimes that includes a map that you can search by city, state or region to find different types of crimes and where they occurred. There’s also graphs that report on trends in criminal activity and a score that represents the quality of life in each searchable area.
Spot Crime – Find city & county crime information that can be focused to specific neighborhoods. Spot Crime also has an interactive map like Crime Reports, but it’s easier to find more localized information about neighborhoods by entering the address you want to search.
US News Best High Schools – U.S. News rates public high schools across several criteria and presents individual rankings for state, nation, and metro area. Also included are advanced placement exam statistics, as well as proficiency ratings and graduation rate.
Great Schools – If you need a good general resource to explore schools from preschools through high school, this is it. You can easily search by school, city or zip code and find rankings for several different criteria, from academics and test scores to learning environment.