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I'm moving in Philadelphia, PA, to a new apartment... though I don't quite yet have the new apartment. I'm still looking.I currently live in Center City, and I do know some neighborhoods, there are a bunch of neighborhood borders (and entire neighborhoods) and such that I simply don't know. There are streets I've never heard of - I'm pretty used to Penn Center / Rittenhouse Square, and not much else. I know some neighborhoods are bad, I know this one is good, but as for the rest, I have no idea.Is there any website that I can type in an address and get a summary of the area? (which neighborhood it is, safety, etc?) I found "StreetAdvisor" but it doesn't seem to have this feature for Philadelphia. Are there others?
Already Tried: General searches StreetAdvisor
Hello there
My suggestion is that you use one or more of the websites that appraise property -- because these websites will tell you about the schools in the area and the population. Here is one that I use frequently --- zillow -- and you can get information and a map by punching the address into the search engine:
http://www.zillow.com/
I do not know of any website where you can actually find the crime rate -- but you might try the police department website or even a telephone call to the police station to see if anyone can give you crime statistics for the area you are considering renting.
I hope that helps. Best of Luck.
--MARY
I've tried Zillow. I probably should have listed sites I've used...Apartment GuidesApartments.com(something similarly named)The issue I had with Zillow is that it seems to aggregate from other sites. I saw a "Center City 3 Bedroom" listing for $999 - naturally, I was shocked, as I'm paying nearly four times that... then I looked at the pictures, and it turns out, I recognized the view. It was a 3 bedroom apartment in my building, probably the same floorplan. After more searching I found Zillow had just taken the listing from a sublet site where it had originally been listed, and they were looking for a roommate.That said - do you mean I should find listings elsewhere, put the address into Zillow to find the neighborhood it's considered to be a part of, and then use something like StreetAdvisor to find out about that neighborhood?
Hello again
I apologize for the delay -- I was offline for a bit. From my experiences with Zillow and Housevalues.com and eppraisals.com I typically enter the address and there is a lot of information about the neighborhoods that these properties are located in. The values are at the top of the pages, yes -- but if you scroll downward you can see information about the neighborhoods -- schools, stores in the area, that sort of thing. I think you are correct to use several different sources because I do not think you are going to be able to find your answers all from one source.
Experience: Researcher, Lawyer, Cook