What is a Walk Score in Real Estate?
Using Walk Score in Looking for Homes
Walk ability has become a very popular real estate statistic home buyers now use when looking for their next home online. A Walk Score is a number ranging from 1-100 and shows how easily you can live, and fully function in society, living at a particulate address.
Walk Score was invented and marketed by…you guessed right…Walk Score.
How Do Home Buyers Use a Walk Score?
The numbers shown in a Walk Score
There are a variety of ways people searching for homes for sale utilize the Walk Score. They can search by easy, walking access to nearby coffee shops, grocery stores, schools, parks and so on depending on what type of lifestyle you live.
If its important for you to live near an abundance of nightclubs, pubs and bars, you have that option too. In addition, when searching for properties, you will notice an aggregate Walk Score somewhere in the majority of online real estate listings. This overall number shows how easy it is to live in a particular location while not owning a car and walking everywhere.
Why is a Walk Score Important to People Buying a Home?
Using the Walk Score when buying a home
With the world today being much more interested in their overall health, many people have chosen to walk to work, walk to get their groceries and so on. With fitness becoming so popular today, many people utilize the walk score not only for walking but for jogging and running.
Walk Score even produces a score for biking, so you can know how easy it is to get around utilizing your bicycle. Since many subdivisions and areas to live don’t even have a sidewalk, it can be a major determining factor in where you live and which home you buy.
Why are Real Estate Website Putting Walk Score On Their Searches?
With online real estate listings being such a force in today’s marketplace, everyone is trying to differentiate their real estate website online. It really all started with the massive success of Zillow. Prior to Zillow, the majority of real estate websites were put forth by real estate brokers and agents.
Many of these sites were not only poor design, but didn’t have a high level of technology behind them. Prior to Zillow, the only major, nation wide real estate portal was Realtor.com. REALTOR.com is a website put forth by the National Association of REALTORS or NAR.
Since REALTOR.com was a website put forth by a trade organization and not directly for profit, they had many limitations on how they could market the website. Now, you will see most advanced real estate websites utilizing Walk Score in their search results. Some even will let you sort your home results by Walk Score.
Walk Score In New Orleans Housing
Because of the age of New Orleans and the fact that quite a bit of the city was built way before we had master plans and public works departments thinking the cities design through, many of the city doesn’t lend itself to walking. This makes the Walk Score even more important for buying a home in New Orleans.
If being able to live in an area that is easily walk able, Walk Score can narrow down your options for your next home purchase. Once you have a smaller list of places in Greater New Orleans where it is safe and applicable to walk to — now you can dig in a little deeper to find the home of your dreams.
