What do we mean by a neighborhood?
Ä¢¹½ÊÓƵ® uses the official government designation for neighborhoods - the census tract.
Census tracts are small, relatively permanent subdivisions of a county that are defined by the U.S. Census Bureau in conjunction with local authorities all across the country to define real neighborhoods that are bounded to contain areas with homogeneous population characteristics (including economic status, lifestyle, and living conditions). Census tracts usually have 4,000 persons, but can range between 1,500 and 8,000 persons. This is the most fine-grained area for which detailed information is made available from the government, to protect the individual privacy of each of us. Because census tracts are based on population, they vary in size depending on the density of settlement. In urban areas, they are small, and in rural areas they can cover an entire small town or even a few small towns in very rural areas.
Since census tracts are subdivisions of a county, we did a spatial overlay of the census tracts onto city and town boundaries using a geographic information system to properly assign each census tract to its appropriate city or town. Then we named each census tract to the local colloquially recognized neighborhood name for that spot (e.g., Boston, MA (Dorchester). If there was not a name available, we named the census tract by the largest street intersection in the census tract (e.g., Worcester, MA (Lincoln St/Plantation St)
Why we don't use Zip Codes as neighborhoods
Zip codes were developed by the Postal Service for the purpose of delivering mail, but were never intended to define coherent neighborhoods. In addition, Zip Codes can have as many as 10 distinctly different census tracts contained within them. When distinct census tracts are blended together in a single Zip Code, the data reflects their average conditions and often gives a false sense of the area. The result is that potentially great matching neighborhoods can be missed, and erroneous matches can also be produced and delivered to you.
Using census tracts makes great matches possible, and helps people find the areas that are best for them and their families. Because we are committed to providing the highest possible quality and finding the neighborhoods that best meet your criteria, we use census tracts. And, as always, we show you the actual street map of the neighborhood so you know exactly where your best matching neighborhood is located.
What is a Condition Alert?
A condition alert is a condition in the neighborhood that triggers an alert. Ä¢¹½ÊÓƵ contains condition alerts to highlight conditions that are extreme, whether good or bad. This helps answer crucial questions about the state of the neighborhood being evaluated, such as:
What are the risks of violent crime here?
Is the risk of home break-ins or other property crimes increasing?
Does real estate here hold its value?
Are the trends in local vacancies or unemployment concerning?
...and dozens more.
Information at a glance that you need to know to invest, appraise or finance a property.
Downtown Northwest median real estate price is $868,722, which is more expensive than 90.0% of the neighborhoods in Florida and 86.9% of the neighborhoods in the U.S.
The average rental price in Downtown Northwest is currently $4,178, based on Ä¢¹½ÊÓƵ's exclusive analysis. The average rental cost in this neighborhood is higher than 93.4% of the neighborhoods in Florida.
Downtown Northwest is a densely urban neighborhood (based on population density) located in Miami, Florida.
Downtown Northwest real estate is primarily made up of small (studio to two bedroom) to medium sized (three or four bedroom) apartment complexes/high-rise apartments and single-family homes. Most of the residential real estate is renter occupied. Many of the residences in the Downtown Northwest neighborhood are newer, built in 2000 or more recently. A number of residences were also built between 1940 and 1969.
Vacant apartments or homes are a major fact of life in Downtown Northwest. The current real estate vacancy rate here is 16.6%. This is higher than the rate of vacancies in 82.5% of all U.S. neighborhoods. In addition, most vacant housing here is vacant year round. This can sometimes be the case in neighborhoods dominated by new construction that is not yet occupied. But often neighborhoods with vacancy rates this high are places that can be plagued by a protracted vacancy problem. If you live here, you may find that a number of buildings in your neighborhood are actually empty.
Notable & Unique Neighborhood Characteristics
The way a neighborhood looks and feels when you walk or drive around it, from its setting, its buildings, and its flavor, can make all the difference. This neighborhood has some really cool things about the way it looks and feels as revealed by Ä¢¹½ÊÓƵ's exclusive research. This might include anything from the housing stock to the types of households living here to how people get around.
People
An interesting characteristic about the Downtown Northwest neighborhood is that there are more incarcerated people living here than 99.9% of neighborhoods in the U.S. The United States has the highest rate of incarceration in the world, currently with 1 out of every 100 adults in the country are incarcerated as a punishment for crimes committed. The extremely high incarceration rate of this neighborhood could mean that a prison, juvenile detention facility or other correctional facility occupies a large proportion of the neighborhood, or contains a large portion of the neighborhood's population.
Real Estate
The Downtown Northwest neighborhood is very unique in that it has one of the highest proportions of one, two, or no bedroom real estate of any neighborhood in America. Most neighborhoods have a mixture of home or apartment sizes from small to large, but here the concentration of studios and other small living spaces is at near-record heights. With 98.9% of the real estate here of this small size, this most assuredly is a notable feature that makes this neighborhood unique, along with just a handful of other neighborhoods in the U.S. that share this characteristic.
In addition, renter-occupied real estate is dominant in the Downtown Northwest neighborhood. The percentage of rental real estate here, according to exclusive Ä¢¹½ÊÓƵ analysis, is 100.0%, which is higher than 99.3% of the neighborhoods in America. If you were to buy and live in the property you bought here, you would be almost alone in doing so.
Furthermore, if you like the look and ambience of new homes and newly built neighborhoods, you will love the Downtown Northwest neighborhood. A whopping 87.4% of the homes and other residential real estate here were built after 1999, which is a higher proportion of new homes then you will find in 98.3% of the neighborhoods in the U.S. Everything here just feels new. In fact, the concentration of newer homes here is so great that they completely dominate the landscape. In most neighborhoods, there is a mixture of ages of residential real estate, but here it is almost completely built during one time frame: 2000 through today.
Also of note, one of the really unique and interesting things about the look and setting of the Downtown Northwest neighborhood is that it is almost entirely dominated by large apartment buildings, such as apartment complexes or high-rise apartments. 89.3% of the residential real estate here is classified as such. This puts this neighborhood on the map as having a higher proportion of large apartment buildings than 98.1% of all neighborhoods in America.
Car Ownership
American households most often have a car, and regularly they have two or three. But households in the Downtown Northwest neighborhood buck this trend. 32.9% of the households in this neighborhood don't own a car at all. This is more carless households than Ä¢¹½ÊÓƵ found in 97.5% of U.S. neighborhoods.
Modes of Transportation
If you like to ride the train to work, this neighborhood may be for you. Ä¢¹½ÊÓƵ's research revealed that 16.9% of the Downtown Northwest neighborhood's commuters ride the train to and from work each day, which is more than we found in 97.0% of America's neighborhoods.
Migration / Stability
The freedom of moving to new places versus the comfort of home. How much and how often people move not only can create diverse and worldly neighborhoods, but simultaneously it can produce a loss of intimacy with one's surroundings and a lack of connectedness to one's neighbors. Ä¢¹½ÊÓƵ's exclusive research has identified this neighborhood as unique with regard to the transience of its populace. In the Downtown Northwest neighborhood, a greater proportion of the residents living here today did not live here five years ago than is found in 99.4% of U.S. Neighborhoods. This neighborhood, more than almost any other in America, has new residents from other areas. What is also interesting to note, is that the Downtown Northwest neighborhood has a greater percentage of residents born in another country (52.4%) than are found in 98.1% of all U.S. neighborhoods.
Diversity
Did you know that the Downtown Northwest neighborhood has more South American and Cuban ancestry people living in it than nearly any neighborhood in America? It's true! In fact, 17.2% of this neighborhood's residents have South American ancestry and 7.0% have Cuban ancestry.
The Neighbors
There are two complementary measures for understanding the income of a neighborhood's residents: the average and the extremes. While a neighborhood may be relatively wealthy overall, it is equally important to understand the rate of people - particularly children - who are living at or below the federal poverty line, which is extremely low income. Some neighborhoods with a lower average income may actually have a lower childhood poverty rate than another with a higher average income, and this helps us understand the conditions and character of a neighborhood.
The neighbors in the Downtown Northwest neighborhood in Miami are lower-middle income, making it a below average income neighborhood. Ä¢¹½ÊÓƵ's research shows that this neighborhood has an income lower than 61.3% of U.S. neighborhoods. In addition, 10.0% of the children seventeen and under living in this neighborhood are living below the federal poverty line, which is a lower rate of childhood poverty than is found in 50.0% of America's neighborhoods.
The old saying "you are what you eat" is true. But it is also true that you are what you do for a living. The types of occupations your neighbors have shape their character, and together as a group, their collective occupations shape the culture of a place.
In the Downtown Northwest neighborhood, 58.2% of the working population is employed in executive, management, and professional occupations. The second most important occupational group in this neighborhood is sales and service jobs, from major sales accounts, to working in fast food restaurants, with 24.8% of the residents employed. Other residents here are employed in manufacturing and laborer occupations (9.3%), and 8.7% in government jobs, whether they are in local, state, or federal positions.
Languages
The most common language spoken in the Downtown Northwest neighborhood is Spanish, spoken by 48.9% of households. Some people also speak English (42.1%).
Ethnicity / Ancestry
Culture is shared learned behavior. We learn it from our parents, their parents, our houses of worship, and much of our culture – our learned behavior – comes from our ancestors. That is why ancestry and ethnicity can be so interesting and important to understand: places with concentrations of people of one or more ancestries often express those shared learned behaviors and this gives each neighborhood its own culture. Even different neighborhoods in the same city can have drastically different cultures.
In the Downtown Northwest neighborhood in Miami, FL, residents most commonly identify their ethnicity or ancestry as South American (17.2%). There are also a number of people of Italian ancestry (8.4%), and residents who report Cuban roots (7.0%), and some of the residents are also of Irish ancestry (6.3%), along with some Puerto Rican ancestry residents (4.1%), among others. In addition, 52.4% of the residents of this neighborhood were born in another country.
Getting to Work
How you get to work – car, bus, train or other means – and how much of your day it takes to do so is a large quality of life and financial issue. Especially with gasoline prices rising and expected to continue doing so, the length and means of one's commute can be a financial burden. Some neighborhoods are physically located so that many residents have to drive in their own car, others are set up so many walk to work, or can take a train, bus, or bike. The greatest number of commuters in Downtown Northwest neighborhood spend between 15 and 30 minutes commuting one-way to work (35.6% of working residents), which is shorter than the time spent commuting to work for most Americans.
Here most residents (33.4%) drive alone in a private automobile to get to work. In addition, quite a number also take the train to get to work (16.9%) and 12.9% of residents also carpool with coworkers, friends, or neighbors for their daily commute. In a neighborhood like this, as in most of the nation, many residents find owning a car useful for getting to work.
SCOUT’s patented match algorithm identifies the most similar neighborhoods to a subject location, and quantifies the similarity to the subject location. This allows analysts to identify the most similar neighborhoods in a local market area for appraisals, investments, and research.
The algorithm uses 273 neighborhood conditions, identifies the dominant dimensions underlying the conditions and calculates the similarity. This captures the true culture and character of locations, economic conditions, and trends.
The closer to 100% means the locations are nearly identical. 80% is a very good, but not excellent match, and so forth.
