OK, so you’ve gone to your lender and been pre-approved for your home loan. You’ve saved up enough for your down payment. You’ve got a few months left on your lease, but it’s time to start actually looking for a new home. But, where do you look? How do you know whether one neighborhood is going to be better for you than another?

There are a number of factors that should go into how you evaluate a given neighborhood. While your real estate agent can help you work through many of these issues, the more you research them on your own the more likely you are to find a neighborhood that fits your needs and your lifestyle.

Here are some of the most important factors to consider when picking a neighborhood:

1. 1. School Quality. If you plan on having kids at all, you want to know what kind of schools the area has. Specifically, you should ask questions about graduation rates, funding and even curriculum.
2. 2. Property Value. You don’t want your home to drop in value the day you move in. You want to find a neighborhood where property values seem to, over the long haul anyways, rise. It’s hard to tell right now whether a neighborhood will have decent property values, largely due to the housing crisis. However, if you go back a decade or so, you’ll find fairly reliable statistics for most neighborhoods.
3. 3. Crime Rate. You want to be safe. You want to be secure. You want to choose a neighborhood that has a relatively low crime rate. You especially want to choose a neighborhood that has a low rate of violent crime.
4. 4. Future construction. Some neighborhoods are part of a growing area. For example, if you live in the outskirts of a given city in an area that used to be primarily farmland, you can count on plenty of new construction. This will affect your home value for quite some time, so be aware of it.
5. 5. Location. You need to choose a neighborhood that’s in relatively close proximity to the places you need and want to be. It should be near the schools, places of employment, hospitals, freeways, airports and other amenities that you’re most likely to use.

While there certainly are other factors to consider, balancing these five concerns out is the biggest challenge when it comes to picking the right neighborhood.

Photo via pnwra