| How Safe is Your Neighborhood ? Plus Market Update | July 8th, 2006 |
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The program is super intuitive to use and is great if you’re concerned about police activity around a property you’re interested in. Cruise through the pages, complete the auto-fill-ins and you’ll get a snazzy map with color coded dots that show you exactly what kind of crimes have been reported within a specified radius. My clients and I used it to research a location at 5th and Shipley in the South of Market area. The location looked a little sketchy, and when we checked out the intersection on CrimeMaps, we found within the past 60 days that there was one assault and a number of auto break-ins and vandalism incidents (broken windows). That sounds kind of nasty until you compare it with a better area, like where my client’s current office is at Mason and Pacific. That location offered up fewer reports of car break-ins and vandalism, but had an assault and an armed robbery within the past two months. Nota Bene:CrimeMaps works with IE 5.5 or higher. I also found that the site works best if you put in an intersection rather than a specific address. Another link on the site offers contact info for the chiefs of each police station. If you want further research you can also ask for the Crime Maps Specialist at each station. The actual link to CrimeMaps is http://www.sfgov.org/crimemaps dontcha’ love how the City makes these kinds of things so easy to remember? ************************************** So how’s the market right now? Well, it feels like all the buyers are sitting around the edge of a pool waiting to see who will jump in first. Then the first one takes the plunge and the others are left standing there, feeling like they should have gone first. The bottom line is that I’m seeing lots of bargains out there with buyers doing nothing but circling around without making a move. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve heard listing agents say “There’s lots of interest and people say they’re going to write, but I don’t have an offer yet.” An exception to this rule is single family homes in entry-level neighborhoods like Sunnyside and Mission Terrace. I heard of one house in Sunnyside recently listed for $775,000. It received multiple offers and went for over $800,000. ***************************************** So my listing at 130A Langton sold in a hot minute right after we reduced the price from $569,000 to $539,000. I recommend being ready to move quickly on the good stuff—when it’s well-priced, it can go fast. However, there is word of another listing in the same building coming up on the front side. The floor plan is identical —tri-level with a deck that I think will offer some nice skyline views. This side of the building also gets better light. Call me if you want more details and I’ll fill you in. Contact me if you want the scoop on where I think the best buys are right now. It’s a great time to make a move before a possible bounce in prices this September—the beginning of fall always seems to bring out more buyers and thus change the supply/demand equation. And remember, there’s no such thing as a stupid real estate question! So don’t ever be afraid to call for advice—even if we’ve never spoken before, I promise I won’t bite! I look forward to delivering more market updates soon! |
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Hello My Favorite People!Wanna’ know how safe your neighborhood is? You can find out with a cool online program I found on the City’s website called “CrimeMaps,” created to allow people with an interest in public safety to easily produce maps and reports of incidents from data contained in SFPD police reports.