You never know who is living next door. Not that there’s a need to promulgate any further paranoia of our neighbors, but it is good to know who is who in your direct vicinity.
Knowledge, after all (and as the cliché goes), is power.
And safety, or the feeling of it, is very valuable within all communities. Continuing along that line of logic, it’s important to your renters that the neighborhood they live in is relatively safe, especially from violent or particularly disgusting crimes as those perpetrated against women or, more importantly, children.
Among the many cool sites out there made available for us to search out our ‘hoods from the comfort of our homes, we have
Family Watchdog and
Family Beacon. You just enter the street, zip code and such, and then pow: up pops an interactive map with color-coded indicators of particular offenders:
Offenses Against Children, Rape, Sexual Battery, and
"Other". The details are pretty nice, too, including photos and descriptions of the offender.
I do believe I've actually seen one of the offenders near one of my properties.
Obviously this service is valuable in helping an investor when analyzing a new potential region for purchasing property, or for re-analyzing the marketability of properties currently in a portfolio. After all, safety is indeed a selling point.
But I do wonder a bit about the "Other" section being lumped in with rapists and such. Do I really want to get worked-up over a neighbor with a load of traffic violations? I mean, what is
IN "Other"?
