What do we mean by a neighborhood?
NeighborhoodScout® uses the official government designation for neighborhoods - the census tract.
Census tracts are small, relatively permanent subdivisions of a county that are defined by the U.S. Census Bureau in conjunction with local authorities all across the country to define real neighborhoods that are bounded to contain areas with homogeneous population characteristics (including economic status, lifestyle, and living conditions). Census tracts usually have 4,000 persons, but can range between 1,500 and 8,000 persons. This is the most fine-grained area for which detailed information is made available from the government, to protect the individual privacy of each of us. Because census tracts are based on population, they vary in size depending on the density of settlement. In urban areas, they are small, and in rural areas they can cover an entire small town or even a few small towns in very rural areas.
Since census tracts are subdivisions of a county, we did a spatial overlay of the census tracts onto city and town boundaries using a geographic information system to properly assign each census tract to its appropriate city or town. Then we named each census tract to the local colloquially recognized neighborhood name for that spot (e.g., Boston, MA (Dorchester). If there was not a name available, we named the census tract by the largest street intersection in the census tract (e.g., Worcester, MA (Lincoln St/Plantation St)
Why we don't use Zip Codes as neighborhoods
Zip codes were developed by the Postal Service for the purpose of delivering mail, but were never intended to define coherent neighborhoods. In addition, Zip Codes can have as many as 10 distinctly different census tracts contained within them. When distinct census tracts are blended together in a single Zip Code, the data reflects their average conditions and often gives a false sense of the area. The result is that potentially great matching neighborhoods can be missed, and erroneous matches can also be produced and delivered to you.
Using census tracts makes great matches possible, and helps people find the areas that are best for them and their families. Because we are committed to providing the highest possible quality and finding the neighborhoods that best meet your criteria, we use census tracts. And, as always, we show you the actual street map of the neighborhood so you know exactly where your best matching neighborhood is located.
What is a Condition Alert?
A condition alert is a condition in the neighborhood that triggers an alert. NeighborhoodScout contains condition alerts to highlight conditions that are extreme, whether good or bad. This helps answer crucial questions about the state of the neighborhood being evaluated, such as:
What are the risks of violent crime here?
Is the risk of home break-ins or other property crimes increasing?
Does real estate here hold its value?
Are the trends in local vacancies or unemployment concerning?
...and dozens more.
Information at a glance that you need to know to invest, appraise or finance a property.
Sahara Park median real estate price is $297,931, which is less expensive than 75.0% of Arizona neighborhoods and 61.0% of all U.S. neighborhoods.
The average rental price in Sahara Park is currently $2,160, based on NeighborhoodScout's exclusive analysis. Rents here are currently lower in price than 57.9% of Arizona neighborhoods.
Sahara Park is an urban neighborhood (based on population density) located in Phoenix, Arizona.
Sahara Park real estate is primarily made up of medium sized (three or four bedroom) to small (studio to two bedroom) single-family homes and apartment complexes/high-rise apartments. Most of the residential real estate is occupied by a mixture of owners and renters. Many of the residences in the Sahara Park neighborhood are older, well-established, built between 1940 and 1969. A number of residences were also built between 1970 and 1999.
Real estate vacancies in Sahara Park are 4.5%, which is lower than one will find in 70.0% of American neighborhoods. Demand for real estate in Sahara Park is above average for the U.S., and may signal some demand for either price increases or new construction of residential product for this neighborhood.
Notable & Unique Neighborhood Characteristics
Many things matter about a neighborhood, but the first thing most people notice is the way a neighborhood looks and its particular character. For example, one might notice whether the buildings all date from a certain time period or whether shop signs are in multiple languages. This particular neighborhood in Phoenix, the Sahara Park neighborhood, has some outstanding things about the way it looks and its way of life that are worth highlighting.
Modes of Transportation
Our research shows that more people carpool to work here in the Sahara Park (24.4%) than in 96.7% of the neighborhoods in America.
People
Astoundingly, the Sahara Park neighborhood has one of the highest concentrations of divorcees living here than of any neighborhood, a higher concentration than NeighborhoodScout found in 95.9% of U.S. neighborhoods. This may be because people living here divorce more often than others, or that divorced people move here after they become divorced. If you are divorced, you will be in good company in this particular Phoenix neighborhood.
Diversity
Did you know that the Sahara Park neighborhood has more Scots-Irish and Scottish ancestry people living in it than nearly any neighborhood in America? It's true! In fact, 8.3% of this neighborhood's residents have Scots-Irish ancestry and 5.0% have Scottish ancestry.
Sahara Park is also pretty special linguistically. Significantly, 0.6% of its residents five years old and above primarily speak Persian at home. While this may seem like a small percentage, it is higher than 96.2% of the neighborhoods in America.
The Neighbors
There are two complementary measures for understanding the income of a neighborhood's residents: the average and the extremes. While a neighborhood may be relatively wealthy overall, it is equally important to understand the rate of people - particularly children - who are living at or below the federal poverty line, which is extremely low income. Some neighborhoods with a lower average income may actually have a lower childhood poverty rate than another with a higher average income, and this helps us understand the conditions and character of a neighborhood.
The neighbors in the Sahara Park neighborhood in Phoenix are lower-middle income, making it a below average income neighborhood. NeighborhoodScout's research shows that this neighborhood has an income lower than 76.7% of U.S. neighborhoods. With 48.9% of the children here below the federal poverty line, this neighborhood has a higher rate of childhood poverty than 93.5% of U.S. neighborhoods.
The old saying "you are what you eat" is true. But it is also true that you are what you do for a living. The types of occupations your neighbors have shape their character, and together as a group, their collective occupations shape the culture of a place.
In the Sahara Park neighborhood, 28.5% of the working population is employed in clerical, assistant, and tech support occupations. The second most important occupational group in this neighborhood is manufacturing and laborer occupations, with 27.4% of the residents employed. Other residents here are employed in executive, management, and professional occupations (23.3%), and 20.8% in sales and service jobs, from major sales accounts, to working in fast food restaurants.
Languages
The most common language spoken in the Sahara Park neighborhood is English, spoken by 49.7% of households. Some people also speak Spanish (45.0%).
Ethnicity / Ancestry
Culture is shared learned behavior. We learn it from our parents, their parents, our houses of worship, and much of our culture – our learned behavior – comes from our ancestors. That is why ancestry and ethnicity can be so interesting and important to understand: places with concentrations of people of one or more ancestries often express those shared learned behaviors and this gives each neighborhood its own culture. Even different neighborhoods in the same city can have drastically different cultures.
In the Sahara Park neighborhood in Phoenix, AZ, residents most commonly identify their ethnicity or ancestry as Mexican (48.8%). There are also a number of people of German ancestry (25.3%), and residents who report Irish roots (12.9%), and some of the residents are also of Scots-Irish ancestry (8.3%), along with some Scottish ancestry residents (5.0%), among others. In addition, 22.9% of the residents of this neighborhood were born in another country.
Getting to Work
Even if your neighborhood is walkable, you may still have to drive to your place of work. Some neighborhoods are located where many can get to work in just a few minutes, while others are located such that most residents have a long and arduous commute. The greatest number of commuters in Sahara Park neighborhood spend between 30 and 45 minutes commuting one-way to work (48.3% of working residents), which is at or a bit above the average length of a commute across all U.S. neighborhoods.
Here most residents (57.6%) drive alone in a private automobile to get to work. In addition, quite a number also carpool with coworkers, friends, or neighbors to get to work (24.4%) . In a neighborhood like this, as in most of the nation, many residents find owning a car useful for getting to work.
SCOUT’s patented match algorithm identifies the most similar neighborhoods to a subject location, and quantifies the similarity to the subject location. This allows analysts to identify the most similar neighborhoods in a local market area for appraisals, investments, and research.
The algorithm uses 273 neighborhood conditions, identifies the dominant dimensions underlying the conditions and calculates the similarity. This captures the true culture and character of locations, economic conditions, and trends.
The closer to 100% means the locations are nearly identical. 80% is a very good, but not excellent match, and so forth.
