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.
Hayden Square / The Lofts at Orchidhouse median real estate price is $810,056, which is more expensive than 82.5% of the neighborhoods in Arizona and 81.0% of the neighborhoods in the U.S.
The average rental price in Hayden Square / The Lofts at Orchidhouse is currently $3,213, based on NeighborhoodScout's exclusive analysis. The average rental cost in this neighborhood is higher than 84.3% of the neighborhoods in Arizona.
Hayden Square / The Lofts at Orchidhouse is an urban neighborhood (based on population density) located in Tempe, Arizona.
Hayden Square / The Lofts at Orchidhouse 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 townhomes. Most of the residential real estate is renter occupied. Many of the residences in the Hayden Square / The Lofts at Orchidhouse neighborhood are newer, built in 2000 or more recently. A number of residences were also built between 1970 and 1999.
Vacant apartments or homes are a major fact of life in Hayden Square / The Lofts at Orchidhouse. The current real estate vacancy rate here is 16.5%. This is higher than the rate of vacancies in 81.2% of all U.S. neighborhoods. In addition, most vacant housing here is vacant year round. This can sometimes be the case in neighborhoods dominated by new construction that is not yet occupied. But often neighborhoods with vacancy rates this high are places that can be plagued by a protracted vacancy problem. If you live here, you may find that a number of buildings in your neighborhood are actually empty.
Notable & Unique Neighborhood Characteristics
When you see a neighborhood for the first time, the most important thing is often the way it looks, like its homes and its setting. Some places look the same, but they only reveal their true character after living in them for a while because they contain a unique mix of occupational or cultural groups. This neighborhood is very unique in some important ways, according to NeighborhoodScout's exclusive exploration and analysis.
People
NeighborhoodScout's analysis shows that the Hayden Square / The Lofts at Orchidhouse neighborhood has a greater concentration of residents currently enrolled in college than 99.4% of the neighborhoods in the U.S. With 56.3% of the population here attending college, this is very much a college-focused neighborhood.
Real Estate
One of the really unique and interesting things about the look and setting of the Hayden Square / The Lofts at Orchidhouse neighborhood is that it is almost entirely dominated by large apartment buildings, such as apartment complexes or high-rise apartments. 93.7% of the residential real estate here is classified as such. This puts this neighborhood on the map as having a higher proportion of large apartment buildings than 98.8% of all neighborhoods in America.
In addition, if you like the look and ambience of new homes and newly built neighborhoods, you will love the Hayden Square / The Lofts at Orchidhouse neighborhood. A whopping 88.1% of the homes and other residential real estate here were built after 1999, which is a higher proportion of new homes then you will find in 98.5% of the neighborhoods in the U.S. Everything here just feels new. In fact, the concentration of newer homes here is so great that they completely dominate the landscape. In most neighborhoods, there is a mixture of ages of residential real estate, but here it is almost completely built during one time frame: 2000 through today.
Furthermore, the Hayden Square / The Lofts at Orchidhouse neighborhood is very unique in that it has one of the highest proportions of one, two, or no bedroom real estate of any neighborhood in America. Most neighborhoods have a mixture of home or apartment sizes from small to large, but here the concentration of studios and other small living spaces is at near-record heights. With 92.9% of the real estate here of this small size, this most assuredly is a notable feature that makes this neighborhood unique, along with just a handful of other neighborhoods in the U.S. that share this characteristic.
Also of note, renter-occupied real estate is dominant in the Hayden Square / The Lofts at Orchidhouse neighborhood. The percentage of rental real estate here, according to exclusive NeighborhoodScout analysis, is 90.2%, which is higher than 96.9% of the neighborhoods in America. If you were to buy and live in the property you bought here, you would be almost alone in doing so.
Modes of Transportation
In the Hayden Square / The Lofts at Orchidhouse neighborhood, walking to work is a real option for many. In fact, NeighborhoodScout's exclusive research reveals walking to and from work is the chosen way to commute for 18.9% of residents here. This is a higher proportion of walking commuters than we found in 98.0% of American neighborhoods. Get ready to put on your walking shoes if you move here!
Migration / Stability
Do you like to be surrounded by people from all over the country or world, with different perspectives and life experiences? Or do you instead prefer to be in a neighborhood where most residents have lived there for a long time, creating a sense of cohesiveness? NeighborhoodScout's analysis reveals that this neighborhood stands out among American neighborhoods for the uniqueness of the mobility of its residents. In the Hayden Square / The Lofts at Orchidhouse neighborhood, a greater proportion of the residents living here today did not live here five years ago than is found in 99.6% of U.S. Neighborhoods. This neighborhood, more than almost any other in America, has new residents from other areas.
Diversity
Did you know that the Hayden Square / The Lofts at Orchidhouse neighborhood has more Belgian ancestry people living in it than nearly any neighborhood in America? It's true! In fact, 1.0% of this neighborhood's residents have Belgian ancestry.
Hayden Square / The Lofts at Orchidhouse is also pretty special linguistically. Significantly, 0.6% 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 95.7% 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 Hayden Square / The Lofts at Orchidhouse neighborhood in Tempe are lower-middle income, making it a below average income neighborhood. NeighborhoodScout's research shows that this neighborhood has an income lower than 64.2% of U.S. neighborhoods. With 12.0% of the children here below the federal poverty line, this neighborhood has a higher rate of childhood poverty than 53.9% of U.S. neighborhoods.
What we choose to do for a living reflects who we are. Each neighborhood has a different mix of occupations represented, and together these tell you about the neighborhood and help you understand if this neighborhood may fit your lifestyle.
In the Hayden Square / The Lofts at Orchidhouse neighborhood, 59.9% 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 19.7% of the residents employed. Other residents here are employed in clerical, assistant, and tech support occupations (14.5%), and 5.9% in manufacturing and laborer 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 Hayden Square / The Lofts at Orchidhouse neighborhood is English, spoken by 76.4% of households. Other important languages spoken here include Spanish, Polish, Chinese and Langs. of India.
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 Hayden Square / The Lofts at Orchidhouse neighborhood in Tempe, AZ, residents most commonly identify their ethnicity or ancestry as Mexican (15.8%). There are also a number of people of German ancestry (12.0%), and residents who report Asian roots (12.0%), and some of the residents are also of Irish ancestry (9.4%), along with some Italian ancestry residents (5.3%), among others. In addition, 18.4% 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 Hayden Square / The Lofts at Orchidhouse neighborhood spend between 15 and 30 minutes commuting one-way to work (39.5% of working residents), which is shorter than the time spent commuting to work for most Americans.
Here most residents (47.1%) drive alone in a private automobile to get to work. In addition, quite a number also hop out the door and walk to work to get to work (18.9%) and 8.4% of residents also carpool with coworkers, friends, or neighbors 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.
