When looking for a new home, there are many factors to consider. It’s already a given that budget and convenient location is what we are looking for in a new home. You might also set your eyes on the dream features of your potential home but what we sometimes forget is choosing the right neighborhood is just as important. For new home buyers, determining the safety of an unfamiliar neighborhood will be quite hard. Therefore, I listed 5 ways to determine the safety of your potential neighborhood.
Buying a new home is one of the biggest investments you can make in your lifetime. It is due to the fact that you have to sacrifice most of your lifetime savings nevertheless, it’s still a great achievement to have a comfortable home of your own.
It is inevitable that choosing the right place to stay is one of the most difficult decisions you will ever make in your life. But nothing affects the value and enjoyment of a home as much as the surrounding area.
Bear in mind that neighborhoods play an integral role in home safety as well as personal happiness. Apart from ensuring the welfare of your family, a good neighborhood also fosters a safe community and may even encourage you to foster and cultivate good relationships with your neighborhood.
1. Check the Reputation of the Homeowner Association
Nothing beats a knowledgeable buyer. Checking the reputation of the developer or the homeowner association is a good start to gain knowledge about the place you plan to stay in. You can do a quick background check of the members of the HOA who is responsible for the safety and regularities of the area. It is better to know these people ahead to evaluate if they deserve the position they have or can do the job properly in the long term.
2. Check if the Location is High Risk in Natural Disaster
This is one of the most important factors to look out for when searching for a new home. A country like the Philippines is prone to natural disasters which can lead to people’s anxiety when choosing for a place to stay. Natural disasters can’t be prevented therefore, it is better to look for a place where there’s no high risk of these disasters to prevent casualties for you and your family.
For everyone’s safety, it’s better to do thorough research of the location of your potential new home.
3. Check the Market Performance of Properties
Your safety and welfare should be at the top of your priorities. With this in mind, you need to choose a neighborhood that is first and foremost, a safe one. Be sure to always check first the market performance of houses in your prospective location. Too many homes going up for sale in a short period of time can be an indication of its overall safety. It may be a result of residents leaving a neighborhood to escape rising crime or economic problems.
Vacant homes often attract an unsavory element such as drug production, prostitution, and gangs. Being aware of it can prevent you from living in such a place.
4. Tour your Potential Neighborhood
No one can deceive your eyes, it is advisable to check things out yourself, observe and evaluate the neighborhood as a whole. Another way to determine the safety of your potential neighborhood is to take a walk or drive around the surrounding area of your prospective home and check if there’s a barred window, graffiti on walls, trash on the streets, broken streetlights, abandoned houses, noisy and irresponsible neighbors, etc. These are all telltale signs of a bad neighborhood. These are things you should avoid as a homebuyer.
For a safe and healthy community, check the neighborhood more than once to be able to see what it might be like to really live there and evaluate if it’s really maintained or not, check if there’s a person guarding the gate of your neighborhood. Ask if there’ll be people who will patrol at night or CCTV around the community. See if there are landmarks and public transportation near the area for easy commute and shopping. This can give you insights into the security stability of the area.
5. Talk to the residents
There’s no other method as effective as a simple conversation. Take a moment to introduce yourself to potential neighbors and ask for their opinion on the neighborhood. Filipinos are known to be friendly and hospitable but not all of them are like that but talking with them will give you an idea of what kind of people they are and assess whether you’ll be comfortable with them as your neighbor. Doing this can help you determine if your potential neighborhood provides enough comfort and safety for you.
Furthermore, you’ll be able to get some information directly from the residents like the current issues or activities, or even past crimes that happened in the area before. Neighbors can be unreasonable most of the time thus this will provide you an honest review and guidelines about the circumstances of that neighborhood.
Final Thoughts
One of the biggest mistakes of first-time homebuyers is to fall in love with a house but failing to adequately research the surrounding area. Learning how to choose the right neighborhood is crucial for you and your family’s safety and happiness. It should be given just as much importance as choosing an ideal home to live in. Even if you’re living in a grand house but didn’t know that you’re living in unsafe neighborhoods, it will definitely affect everyone’s poor mental and physical health and lower the well-being of your family.
BRIA Homes is a subsidiary of GOLDEN MV Holdings, Inc., .one of the largest real estate companies in the country. BRIA Homes is primed to bring quality and affordable house and lot packages and condominium units closer to ordinary Filipino families. This is the goal that drives every single employee in the company, for which the ultimate fulfillment is seeing a client happily moving into BRIA’s homes.
To know more, visit their website at www.bria.com.ph, like and follow “Bria Homes, Inc.” on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, YouTube, Pinterest, Spotify, Viber Community, Telegram Channel, Kakao Talk, LINE and WhatsApp, or call 0939-887-9637.
Written by Michelle Melody S. Cruz
