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.
Town Center West median real estate price is $619,964, which is more expensive than 45.7% of the neighborhoods in New York and 74.9% of the neighborhoods in the U.S.
The average rental price in Town Center West is currently $4,366, based on NeighborhoodScout's exclusive analysis. The average rental cost in this neighborhood is higher than 83.7% of the neighborhoods in New York.
Town Center West is an urban neighborhood (based on population density) located in Huntington Station, New York.
Town Center West real estate is primarily made up of large (four, five or more bedroom) to medium sized (three or four bedroom) single-family homes and townhomes. Most of the residential real estate is occupied by a mixture of owners and renters. Many of the residences in the Town Center West neighborhood are older, well-established, built between 1940 and 1969. A number of residences were also built before 1940.
Home and apartment vacancy rates are 6.1% in Town Center West. NeighborhoodScout analysis shows that this rate is lower than 58.3% of the neighborhoods in the nation, approximately near the middle range for vacancies.
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.
People
One of the really interesting characteristics about the Town Center West neighborhood is that, according to NeighborhoodScout's exclusive research, it is an excellent choice in which to reside for college students. Due to its popularity among college students who already choose to live here, its walkability, and its above average safety from crime, the neighborhood is ideal for prospective or already-enrolled college students. Between semesters and during school breaks, you'll notice that the excitement here fluctuates with the college seasons. Despite the excitement however, parents of college-age children can rest easy knowing that this neighborhood has an above average safety rating. For each of these reasons, the neighborhood is rated among the top 0.6% of college-friendly places to live in the state of New York.
In addition, the Town Center West neighborhood has a greater percentage of children living in poverty (66.7%) than found in 98.1% of all U.S. neighborhoods. Children living in poverty is one of the challenges facing America, and the world, and in this neighborhood in particular, the problem can be considered acute.
Car Ownership
We Americans love our cars. Not only are they a necessity for most Americans due to the shape of our neighborhoods and the distances between where we live, work, shop, and go to school, but we also fancy them. As a result, most households in America have one, two, or three cars. But NeighborhoodScout's exclusive analysis shows that the Town Center West neighborhood has a highly unusual pattern of car ownership. Residents of this neighborhood must really love automobiles. NeighborhoodScout's Analysis reveals that 36.7% of the households here have four, five, or more cars. That is more cars per household than in 97.0% of the neighborhoods in the nation.
Modes of Transportation
If you like to ride the train to work, this neighborhood may be for you. NeighborhoodScout's research revealed that 9.7% of the Town Center West neighborhood's commuters ride the train to and from work each day, which is more than we found in 95.3% of America's neighborhoods.
Diversity
Did you know that the Town Center West neighborhood has more Haitian and Austrian ancestry people living in it than nearly any neighborhood in America? It's true! In fact, 6.8% of this neighborhood's residents have Haitian ancestry and 1.2% have Austrian ancestry.
Town Center West is also pretty special linguistically. Significantly, 3.3% of its residents five years old and above primarily speak Tagalog, which is the first language of the Philippine region, at home. While this may seem like a small percentage, it is higher than 96.3% of the neighborhoods in America.
The Neighbors
How wealthy a neighborhood is, from very wealthy, to middle income, to low income is very formative with regard to the personality and character of a neighborhood. Equally important is the rate of people, particularly children, who live below the federal poverty line. In some wealthy gated communities, the areas immediately surrounding can have high rates of childhood poverty, which indicates other social issues. NeighborhoodScout's analysis reveals both aspects of income and poverty for this neighborhood.
The neighbors in the Town Center West neighborhood in Huntington Station are wealthy, making it among the 15% highest income neighborhoods in America. NeighborhoodScout's exclusive analysis reveals that this neighborhood has a higher income than 86.9% of the neighborhoods in America. With 66.7% of the children here below the federal poverty line, this neighborhood has a higher rate of childhood poverty than 98.1% 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 Town Center West neighborhood, 42.0% 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 22.9% of the residents employed. Other residents here are employed in manufacturing and laborer occupations (21.7%), and 13.4% 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 Town Center West neighborhood is English, spoken by 49.0% of households. Other important languages spoken here include Spanish, Tagalog (the first language of the Philippine region) and French.
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 Town Center West neighborhood in Huntington Station, NY, residents most commonly identify their ethnicity or ancestry as Irish (9.8%). There are also a number of people of Mexican ancestry (7.1%), and residents who report Haitian roots (6.8%), and some of the residents are also of Puerto Rican ancestry (5.0%), along with some Dominican ancestry residents (3.9%), among others. In addition, 31.0% of the residents of this neighborhood were born in another country.
Getting to Work
How you get to work – car, bus, train or other means – and how much of your day it takes to do so is a large quality of life and financial issue. Especially with gasoline prices rising and expected to continue doing so, the length and means of one's commute can be a financial burden. Some neighborhoods are physically located so that many residents have to drive in their own car, others are set up so many walk to work, or can take a train, bus, or bike. The greatest number of commuters in Town Center West neighborhood spend under 15 minutes commuting one-way to work (33.0% of working residents), one of the shortest commutes across America.
Here most residents (66.4%) 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 (13.1%) and 9.7% of residents also take the train 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.
