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.
Neary / Mission Hill median real estate price is $1,135,910, which is more expensive than 61.6% of the neighborhoods in California and 90.1% of the neighborhoods in the U.S.
The average rental price in Neary / Mission Hill is currently $4,877, based on NeighborhoodScout's exclusive analysis. The average rental cost in this neighborhood is higher than 89.2% of the neighborhoods in California.
Neary / Mission Hill is a densely urban neighborhood (based on population density) located in Santa Cruz, California.
Neary / Mission Hill real estate is primarily made up of small (studio to two bedroom) to medium sized (three or four bedroom) apartment complexes/high-rise apartments and single-family homes. Most of the residential real estate is renter occupied. Many of the residences in the Neary / Mission Hill neighborhood are established but not old, having been built between 1970 and 1999. A number of residences were also built between 1940 and 1969.
Real estate vacancies in Neary / Mission Hill are 5.3%, which is lower than one will find in 64.8% of American neighborhoods. Demand for real estate in Neary / Mission Hill 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
The way a neighborhood looks and feels when you walk or drive around it, from its setting, its buildings, and its flavor, can make all the difference. This neighborhood has some really cool things about the way it looks and feels as revealed by NeighborhoodScout's exclusive research. This might include anything from the housing stock to the types of households living here to how people get around.
Modes of Transportation
If your dream is to be able to ride your bike to work each day, look no further than this unique neighborhood. With 12.0% of residents in the Neary / Mission Hill neighborhood commuting on a bicycle to and from work daily, this neighborhood has more bicycle commuters than 99.8% of all neighborhoods in the U.S., according to NeighborhoodScout's exclusive analysis.
People
NeighborhoodScout's analysis shows that the Neary / Mission Hill neighborhood has a greater concentration of residents currently enrolled in college than 98.3% of the neighborhoods in the U.S. With 26.4% of the population here attending college, this is very much a college-focused neighborhood.
Occupations
There are more people living in the Neary / Mission Hill neighborhood employed as sales and service workers (61.2%) than almost any neighborhood in the country. From fast-food service workers to major sales accounts, sales and service workers make up the largest proportion of our national employment picture. But despite that size and importance nationally, this neighborhood still stands out as unique due to the dominance of people living here who work in such occupations.
Diversity
Did you know that the Neary / Mission Hill neighborhood has more Iranian and Welsh ancestry people living in it than nearly any neighborhood in America? It's true! In fact, 2.8% of this neighborhood's residents have Iranian ancestry and 3.1% have Welsh ancestry.
Neary / Mission Hill is also pretty special linguistically. Significantly, 4.2% of its residents five years old and above primarily speak Japanese at home. While this may seem like a small percentage, it is higher than 99.6% of the neighborhoods in America.
Migration / Stability
Some neighborhoods have more internal cohesiveness than others. While other neighborhoods feel like a collection of strangers who just happen to live near each other. Sometimes this comes down to not only the personalities of the people in a place, but how long people have been together in that neighborhood. NeighborhoodScout's research has revealed some interesting things about the rootedness of people in the Neary / Mission Hill neighborhood. In the Neary / Mission Hill neighborhood, a greater proportion of the residents living here today did not live here five years ago than is found in 97.7% of U.S. Neighborhoods. This neighborhood, more than almost any other in America, has new residents from other areas.
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 Neary / Mission Hill neighborhood in Santa Cruz are lower-middle income, making it a below average income neighborhood. NeighborhoodScout's research shows that this neighborhood has an income lower than 75.8% of U.S. neighborhoods. In addition, 1.4% of the children seventeen and under living in this neighborhood are living below the federal poverty line, which is a lower rate of childhood poverty than is found in 77.4% of America'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 Neary / Mission Hill neighborhood, 42.2% of the working population is employed in executive, management, and professional occupations. The second most important occupational group in this neighborhood is sales and service jobs, from major sales accounts, to working in fast food restaurants, with 38.8% of the residents employed. Other residents here are employed in manufacturing and laborer occupations (11.5%), and 7.5% in clerical, assistant, and tech support occupations.
Languages
The languages spoken by people in this neighborhood are diverse. These are tabulated as the languages people preferentially speak when they are at home with their families. The most common language spoken in the Neary / Mission Hill neighborhood is English, spoken by 68.8% of households. Other important languages spoken here include Spanish, Chinese and Japanese.
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 Neary / Mission Hill neighborhood in Santa Cruz, CA, residents most commonly identify their ethnicity or ancestry as Mexican (21.5%). There are also a number of people of Asian ancestry (17.1%), and residents who report German roots (8.0%), and some of the residents are also of English ancestry (7.9%), along with some Irish ancestry residents (3.7%), among others. In addition, 13.8% 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 Neary / Mission Hill neighborhood spend under 15 minutes commuting one-way to work (49.5% of working residents), one of the shortest commutes across America.
Here most residents (55.9%) drive alone in a private automobile to get to work. In addition, quite a number also bicycle to get to work (12.0%) and 9.1% of residents also hop out the door and walk to work for their daily commute. 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.
