Real Estate Agent · Indianapolis, IN · Member since 2015 · 87 posts · 56 votes
There always seems to be a discussion on which neighborhoods are good to invest in Indianapolis, so I wanted to point out a new tool that the city has unveiled to track different metrics for neighborhoods in the city - Indy Vitals. According to the Indianapolis Star, the site will track property values, crime, poverty and vacancy rates and allow you to compare neighborhoods on this data. It will also show how these factors have changed over the past five years and whether they are trending upward or downward.
It's of note that the data is not up to the minute (the article mentions that the most recent data may be up to a couple years old), but thought it was worth a mention as a good starting point for investors who are looking to find out more about a particular areas of the city.
I checked out the website with great interest as the topic of good/best neighborhoods in Indianapolis is a frequent topic on BP, but while the website certainly has a lot of "data", unfortunately it provides quite little in terms of "information value".
What do I mean by this?
I tested a few "neighborhoods" in the application, and the unfortunately data can be highly misleading (Note: How this website defines "neighborhoods" may be different than common definitions (one simple example would be how they define the borders of Fountain Square - I don't think that most real estate professionals would say that Fountain Square goes that far east).
Also, if you take as an example a neighborhood like Butler-Tarkington, on the south end (38th-42nd), it can be quite rough and $50k houses can be found readily, but in the northern end of the exact same neighborhood, you can find beautiful virtual mansions with manicured lawns which can easily be $500k - $1MM.
So, just to summarize, while there are some "tools" which can be helpful, this just further illustrates once again, how difficult & challenging, Indianapolis can be & how one must do their own due diligence.
Completely agree @Matthew Schroeder! It definitely ove- generalizes areas, but with so many people looking for a starting point in Indy, I think it's not a bad tool. You definitely need to still do due diligence on the area you invest in.
I have attempted to provide some information value based on the Indy Vitals data. It is, of course, subject to the limitations of the Indy Vitals data set, but my analysis may be of some value.