Police crime maps have been officially launched today – 1st February. They have been up and running for a while but it’s official today! They’re really useful. So useful that you’ll wish you’d had access to the data years ago.
Type in the area you’re looking to buy in and you get a street by street breakdown of crime and types of crime. Fantastic for spotting rogue roads that might look all nice and quiet during the day – but will reveal the levels of crime including anti-social behaviour. It only shows the previous months though and we’re not sure they plan to archive data. You might want to learn to do screen grabs of the page or even print it out – especially if you’re trying to achieve a discount on the asking price of a property. Or you might even want to not buy a property when you discover what goes on around there!
It’s an amazing piece of data displaying that will show you the nice sides of towns and the dodgy sides. Someone on the BBC news was worried it might affect house prices! Too right it will! As well as lowering the prices in rough areas, it might however put prices up in quiet areas!
It’s well worth looking at the areas you’re interested in buying a house in! Fantastic stuff!