Once you start researching the real story of criminality and poverty in this country, you can’t help feeling a bit overwhelmed. It’s mountains and mountains of often conflicting data.

This is why today we go straight at the heart of the matter. More exactly you’ll learn precisely what to do in order to find out just how dangerous your neighborhood is.

How?

Well for start we’re gonna ditch the FBI with their screwy statistics and we’ll turn instead to the people that have made it their business to put a price on the stats we’re after. Yup, we’re taking a trip in the real estate world. Not the most glamorous approach, I know, but probably the most effective.

You see, behind the sales pitch and the fake smile, real estate is a cutthroat business and data is often the key that makes a difference. This is why the data real estate experts use is the most accurate available.

So without further ado, here’s the walkthrough. For no reason whatsoever we’ll use Duluth Minnesota as our example.

How to Figure Out the Poverty Rate

The first online tool we’re gonna use can be found at http://www.city-data.com/ . Keep in mind that they also offer data regarding schools, so if you’re a parent you might want to check that out as well.

Keep in mind, that in order to find out the data for a specific neighborhood all you have to do is hover over it and a red dot will highlight below the figure for it.

As you see, Duluth is fairly typical since it has an inner city poverty problem. While you’re at it, you might also be interested in the vacancy rate for rented or sold properties, a fairly good predictor for the “health” of a neighborhood.

How to Figure Out the Crime Rate

Ok, time to move on to another website. The address is http://www.neighborhoodscout.com/ . What you have to do is enter the name of your city/town followed by the state then hit the “Scout Now” button.

So what’s the point of all this?

What you should be noticing is the almost perfect correlation between the high poverty level and the high crime rate. Watch out for the poverty rate and you’ll be able to predict the crime rate, it’s as easy as that. However you should also remember that virtually all the data you can have access to is at least 2-3 years old. This means that you should keep an eye out for local economic news if you want to know in “real-time” how dangerous your neighborhood is becoming.