New website tracks specific instances of crime – will that help or hurt your property?

I always remembered the "crime" question by prospects as being especially tricky to handle. Living in a big city like Houston, you can't just tell them that crime is a fact of life - they don't want to hear that. This new tool could be a way out. CrimeReports.com pulls in crime data from cities throughout the country, allowing you to see not only that a crime has been committed, but what type of crime specifically. The crimes are shown as icons on a map; however, if multiple crimes exist at one location, it still only shows ONE icon. This can be very important because visually speaking, it minimizes the impact of multiple crimes on a single location. This is especially important for multifamily housing since our housing is so dense, which usually means that on a map, multiple crimes do not show up on a map as spread out, but rather consolidated in a very tight area. The CrimeReports map, however, puts a much more positive light on a community if only seen with a quick glance. So when you get that crime question, it might be a good idea to bring up the map of your area and show it to your prospects directly!

(Quick aside) Historically, there has been a myth that apartment communities have more crime than single-family developments. Why is that? Well, officers responding to a call often just list the address and treat all the apartments in a community as a single unit. Therefore, instead of stating there were three crimes last year across 300 homes, it shows as three crimes for one property. You can see how the two different statements have much different connotations! Although many don't know this, NMHC did a study that showed that crime between apartment communities and single-family communities were actually quite comparable.