Best Neighborhoods for Real Estate Buying and Investing

More Than 10,000 Neighborhoods Ranked and Assigned Letter Grades from A to F; Report Also Provides Aggregate Housing Characteristics and Trends by Neighborhood Grade

IRVINE, Calif. – August 2, 2018 — ATTOM Data Solutions, curator of the nation's premier property database, today released its 2018 Neighborhood Housing Index, which uses new neighborhood boundary data to rank more than 10,000 neighborhood housing markets nationwide based on six factors impacting the hyperlocal housing market: affordability, home price appreciation, school scores, crime rates, unemployment rates and property taxes (see more in the methodology enclosed below).

The top five U.S. neighborhood housing markets based on the index were the Pine Ridge neighborhood in the Naples, Florida, metro ($632,871 median price); Westlake neighborhood in the Mobile, Alabama, metro ($196,179); Union neighborhood in the San Jose, California, metro ($795,000); Westmoreland neighborhood in the Charlotte, North Carolina metro ($326,000); and Hunters Hill neighborhood in the Denver, Colorado, metro ($271,000).

"While home prices are typically higher in higher-ranked neighborhoods with better schools and lower crime, there are still many top-notch neighborhoods with more reasonably priced homes," said Daren Blomquist, senior vice president at ATTOM Data Solutions. "The top five neighborhoods in this ranking represent a diverse set of markets across the country, illustrating that great neighborhoods come in many different forms."

Housing trends by neighborhood grade

ATTOM divided the 10,950 ranked neighborhoods into quintiles, assigning each of the five groups a letter grade from A to F, and then analyzed housing characteristics and trends by group.

*Rental rates and returns, and home flipping returns are calculated at the zip code level based on the zip code in which each neighborhood is located.

"It's somewhat surprising that the worst affordability is in neighborhoods with an F grade, even though those markets also posted the lowest home prices and negative price appreciation," Blomquist noted. "Meanwhile, rents are rising the fastest in these neighborhoods, illustrating why the path to homeownership can be so difficult in these areas."

A-rated neighborhoods with home prices of $100,000 or less

There were 136 neighborhoods with an A rating and with median home prices of $100,000 or less, led by the Devonshire neighborhood in the Mobile, Alabama, metro ($78,038 median price); the Park Central neighborhood in the Orlando Florida, metro ($91,750); the East English Village neighborhood in the Detroit, Michigan, metro area ($66,750); the Cypress Shores neighborhood in the Mobile, Alabama, metro ($85,000); and the Hathaway Manor neighborhood in the St. Louis, Missouri, metro ($69,190).

About ATTOM Data Solutions

ATTOM Data Solutions provides premium property data to power products that improve transparency, innovation, efficiency and disruption in a data-driven economy. ATTOM multi-sources property tax, deed, mortgage, foreclosure, environmental risk, natural hazard, and neighborhood data for more than 155 million U.S. residential and commercial properties covering 99 percent of the nation's population. A rigorous data management process involving more than 20 steps validates, standardizes and enhances the data collected by ATTOM, assigning each property record with a persistent, unique ID — the ATTOM ID. The 9TB ATTOM Data Warehouse fuels innovation in many industries including mortgage, real estate, insurance, marketing, government and more through flexible data delivery solutions that include bulk file licenses, APIs, market trends, marketing lists, match & append and more.