Deciding where to live in Phoenix is often one of the first steps we help home buyers take after contacting us. Some need more help than others, usually depending on if they’ve lived in the Phoenix area before, but here are a few of the questions all home buyers should ask themselves during their home search.
For a longer list of common issues buyers may want to investigate or verify concerning a property purchase, the Arizona Association of REALTORS® (AAR) Buyer Advisory is another excellent resource.
1. Are there any environmental hazards nearby? Although it is often very difficult to identify environmental hazards, the Arizona Department of Environmental Quality’s (ADEQ) website can tell you the locations of open and closed landfills, if a property is in an area designated by the ADEQ as requiring cleanup, and many other details.
2. How is the area affected by crime and sex offenders? For crime statistics, the City of Phoenix and most of its suburbs track their own numbers, so you’ll need to visit each city’s website if you want to compare the crime statistics across several cities. See below for a link to each city’s website. For the location of sex offenders located throughout Arizona along with a great deal of additional information, the Arizona Department of Public Safety is one of the most popular resources. Lastly, for a more visual look at the crime across the Phoenix Metro Area, PicketReport attempts to display the lifestyle and personas of the people who live in each Phoenix area zip code on a color-coded, easy-to-use map. If you’ve used PicketReport before, let us know what you think about it in a comment below!
City of Phoenix
Most of Phoenix’s suburbs
3. Do I want to live near a major airport? If so, how close is the closest airport? According to AAR’s Buyer Advisory, “the legislature has mandated the identification of areas in the immediate vicinity of military and public airports that are susceptible to a certain level of noise from aircraft.” If you think airport noise will be important to you, the maps of Arizona’s military airports can be found here, while the maps of most of Arizona’s public airports can be found here.
4. How are the nearby schools ranked? There are countless ways to rank a school’s merits, but we think GreatSchools does one of the best jobs at aggregating student test scores with student-written reviews and parent-written reviews.
5. Do I want to live near a major freeway, and how does that freeway affect the local traffic conditions? Although most people say they want easy access to a nearby freeway, there can be undesirable attributes associated with freeways, too. These attributes can include noise and rush-hour-related traffic.
Image Credit: mattwi1s0n on Flickr. CC Licensed.
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