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.
Ridgewood Village / Conway Acres median real estate price is $140,115, which is less expensive than 71.3% of Alabama neighborhoods and 86.4% of all U.S. neighborhoods.
The average rental price in Ridgewood Village / Conway Acres is currently $1,639, based on NeighborhoodScout's exclusive analysis. The average rental cost in this neighborhood is higher than 71.2% of the neighborhoods in Alabama.
Ridgewood Village / Conway Acres is a rural neighborhood (based on population density) located in Auburn, Alabama.
Ridgewood Village / Conway Acres real estate is primarily made up of small (studio to two bedroom) to medium sized (three or four bedroom) mobile homes and townhomes. Most of the residential real estate is occupied by a mixture of owners and renters. Many of the residences in the Ridgewood Village / Conway Acres 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 Ridgewood Village / Conway Acres. The current real estate vacancy rate here is 28.4%. This is higher than the rate of vacancies in 94.3% 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
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.
Real Estate
The Ridgewood Village / Conway Acres neighborhood stands out for having the majority of its residential real estate made up of mobile homes. In fact, 76.1% of the occupied real estate here are mobile homes, which is a greater proportion than is found in 99.9% of the neighborhoods in the U.S. If you like mobile homes, this might be a great neighborhood in which to look for real estate.
In addition, if you like the look and ambience of new homes and newly built neighborhoods, you will love the Ridgewood Village / Conway Acres neighborhood. A whopping 73.5% 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 96.2% of the neighborhoods in the U.S. Everything here just feels new.
People
An extraordinary 28.4% of the residents of the Ridgewood Village / Conway Acres neighborhood are currently enrolled in college. This is such a large part of life in this neighborhood that the neighborhood changes a great deal with the change of semesters and is far quieter during the summer when many students are away.
In addition, one of the unique characteristics of the Ridgewood Village / Conway Acres neighborhood revealed by analysis is that the per capita income of residents here is lower than that found in 97.1% of the neighborhoods in America.
Modes of Transportation
While most Americans do drive to work alone each day, the Ridgewood Village / Conway Acres neighborhood stands out by having 88.5% of commuters doing so, which is a higher proportion of people driving alone to work than NeighborhoodScout found in 95.5% of all American neighborhoods.
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 Ridgewood Village / Conway Acres neighborhood in Auburn are low income, making it among the lowest income neighborhoods in America. NeighborhoodScout's research shows that this neighborhood has an income lower than 97.1% of U.S. neighborhoods. In addition, 3.6% of the children seventeen and under living in this neighborhood are living below the federal poverty line, which is a lower rate of childhood poverty than is found in 69.0% of America'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 Ridgewood Village / Conway Acres neighborhood, 57.1% 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 17.2% of the residents employed. Other residents here are employed in clerical, assistant, and tech support occupations (14.3%), and 11.4% 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 Ridgewood Village / Conway Acres neighborhood is English, spoken by 95.8% of households. Other important languages spoken here include Italian, Spanish and Polish.
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 Ridgewood Village / Conway Acres neighborhood in Auburn, AL, residents most commonly identify their ethnicity or ancestry as English (12.1%). There are also a number of people of Irish ancestry (10.1%), and residents who report German roots (6.3%), and some of the residents are also of Scottish ancestry (4.4%), along with some Italian ancestry residents (2.2%), among others.
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 Ridgewood Village / Conway Acres neighborhood spend between 15 and 30 minutes commuting one-way to work (43.4% of working residents), which is shorter than the time spent commuting to work for most Americans.
Here most residents (88.5%) 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 (10.5%) . 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.
