How to Assess a Neighborhood

There are a lot of factors that make a neighborhood "good," and only you can decide what good means. Near a main street or tucked in a subdivision? Urban or rural? Our job is to learn what you're after and then help you figure out which areas deliver it.

Visit at different times

Tuesday at 8 a.m. and Saturday at 9 p.m. tell you different things about the same block. Traffic, street parking, and noise all change. If you're out of the area, we'll drive it and show you on video.

Check the commute yourself

Drive it at the hour you'd actually drive it, not at noon on a Sunday.

Walk the edges

Spokane changes block by block. The difference between two streets can show up in home style, lot size, and price. Walk four blocks in each direction before you decide an area is or isn't for you.

Look at what's being built

New construction, remodels, and commercial projects tell you where an area is heading. So do empty storefronts.

Ask about what you can't see

Plowing routes, garbage day, irrigation districts, HOA rules, and whether the street floods in spring. We can find most of this out, and a future neighbor will usually tell you the rest.

Schools and crime data

Fair housing rules keep us from characterizing neighborhoods by school quality or crime, and honestly, those are questions you should answer with primary sources rather than an agent's impression. Two we point clients to:

• greatschools.org — enter an address to see the assigned schools and their ratings, public, private, and charter.
• communitycrimemap.com — enter an address, filter by the types of incidents you care about, and see them mapped.

Always verify school assignments with the district before relying on them; boundaries change.