Last updated on November 16th, 2018 at 07:41 pm
You can narrow your search by using demographics to find your next home. If you have not purchased a home in the last few years, you may be surprised at how much information is available to help you narrow down the community and even the block that your next home is located on.
Most data used in a demographics search comes from the U.S. Census Bureau. The data is crunched by many companies, organizations and government departments to provide usable results. Before this gets into how to obtain the information, let’s discuss the type of information that is typically used in home searches.
Median Income – This number may be important to you and not to others. If you would like to live in a neighborhood where your neighbors earn about what you earn, this may be a good number to look at. If you move to a neighborhood with significantly higher or lower median income, you may be uncomfortable or not.
Education – Generally studies track the percent of residents with college degrees or perhaps have graduated from high school. If you have a college degree, perhaps you may have more in common with your neighbors if there is a high percentage of college degrees in the area. Also, the level of parents education may have some bearing on how well their children will do in school.
Married or Not – This is a statistic that some people are interested in if they have children. A high percent of married couples to single people may mean more children. Although there are other demographics that indicate data about children. You may not want to live in a largely single, party area if you are raising children.
Race/Ethnic Origin – You may feel comfortable living by others who share a similar heritage. While a real estate agent may not by law assist a buyer with this category, you can do your own research.
Average cost of a home – This factor can be a starting point by using your budget and narrowing the community to one with an average or median price per home to fit your budget.
Age – If you are over for example 55, you may want to look for an age qualified community. There are federal guidelines here as well. While you may use age as a factor, most properties are allowed to have children as long as the buyer or principal is over 55.
Population per square mile – If you wish to live in a population dense area, this will help you. The same is true if you wish to live in a small city with a lower number of people per square mile.
Persons living in a household – This is somewhat similar to the population per square mile. Some communities were not designed for high numbers of people living in homes. For example most of the homes in an area may be 3 bedroom and the number of persons is 5 per household. Compare this to an area with the national average of about 2.5.
All of the above data and more is available from numerous sites. There are sites what allow you to compare two communities by selecting the demographic points you are interested in.
Using demographics to find your next home does help to narrow the geography when searching for that perfect house. The last census was in 2010 and data after that point is generally estimated. The next census is in 2020 and the data will not be available until about 2021. Just remember that the data used is a bit dated.
If you are looking to buy new construction, some demographics will be useful and some will not because the area may have been created during the past ten years. The estimates that are used to keep the statistics updated are generally good but even those numbers are dated.
In addition to statistics provided by the U.S. Census Bureau or third parties who use their data, there is information available about schools. A rating system exists on a 1-10 scale for schools. The data is available at several websites. There are actually schools out there that are rated 1 and schools that are rated a 10.
As a rule of thumb, the higher the school rating, the higher the property price. This may not be true everywhere but I have seen this in Southern California. Few schools achieve a 10 so most of the “good” schools seem to have ratings between 7 and 9. The difference in price for a house where the school is rated example 3 and one at 8 can be tens of thousands of dollars.
Note:
As mentioned above, a number of the categories above can not be discussed with a real estate agent. Real estate agents are not permitted to discuss what could be information about a “protected class”. Your decision to use any of the information in this article is purely yours. The author and this site has not attempted to encourage the use of demographics or emphasize any category. Any suggested use of a category is for example purposes only.
