5 tools for helping you choose where to move in a new city

You’ve made the big decision and are moving to a new city. Now, you’ve just got to decide where in the new city you want to live! If you don’t know much about the city and don’t have much time to spend there, then it can be really difficult to decide which neighborhood to live in. Luckily, there are now a lot of tools which can help you decide which neighborhood to live in from your couch.


Yelp neighborhood reviews
Did you know that Yelp has reviews of entire neighborhoods? These reviews are informal, written by locals and visitors, and provide a lot more insight than you’d get from those biased reviews on city websites and newspapers.


USA.com
Formerly City Data, USA.com is a great resource for finding out information about cities and specific neighborhoods. You can get the facts on average home costs, cost of living, school districts, growth, and much more. You can also sort through cities in a state by rankings such as Education, Expensive/Cheapest, Richest/Poorest, and Crime.


Crime stats
Before you move into a neighborhood, you want to make sure it is safe. One of the best resources for this is the website crimereports.com. It lets you see exactly how many crimes have been reported and what type (such as break-ins, homicides, assaults, and vehicle thefts) and where registered sex offenders live. There is also an option for showing quality of life.


Google Street View
Want to know what a neighborhood looks like before moving in? Just use Google’s Street View tool. You can “walk” through the streets and see how clean they are, what condition the buildings are in, where parks are located, and what hot-spots are nearby.


School districts
If you’ve got kids, then your decision of where to move will mostly be based on the school districts in the area. The website schooldigger.com is a great resource for finding info about schools, including class sizes, performance, and programs available.