What a Real Estate Listing Can Tell You About a Strong Town

Real estate agents will look for every advantage to try to sell a property, from the home’s desirable features to a neighborhood’s amenities to the local school system. So, a real estate listing can be used as a roadmap to the attributes that Strong Towns advocates for: human-scale development, safe places to walk and bike, and responsive local government. But since no listing will ever come right out and say "heaven help you if you’re an avid walker," here's a guide to deciphering whether you’re looking at a nice house in an appealing, resilient neighborhood, or just a nice house.

1. Photos

Every good listing on a real estate website will have professional-quality photos documenting all the best attributes of the property. You may see soaring atriums, tastefully appointed bathrooms, and lovely landscaping around a backyard fire pit. But if an agent knows the town or neighborhood is a selling point, they’ll include photos of those, too. So after you virtually visit every room in the house, look for the slideshow to continue with photos of a thriving main street, nearby parks and recreational facilities, or scenes of natural beauty that draw residents together. If you don't see any photos beyond the house or yard, they may be telling you something by omission. 

2. Walkability Score

More than anything, this will tell you if you're buying in a Strong Town. Human-scale development puts goods and services in easy access of residents. A street versus a stroad can keep you safer as you use these amenities. The National Association of Realtors has this helpful explainer: “Walk Score bases its scores on the walking distance from any given address to amenities such as stores, restaurants and parks, the number of nearby amenities and the ease of walking to them — with short blocks and regular intersections considered more pedestrian friendly. An address with a score of 70-89 is ‘very walkable.’ A score of 90-100 is considered ‘a walker’s paradise.’”

Virtually any place that would be called a “walker’s paradise” could also be described as a Strong Town. Higher Walk Scores also correlate directly to higher property values, with the trend of increased demand for walkable neighborhoods and a limited supply to satisfy it.  

3. Google Streetview

A listing may honestly be able to claim the property is a 10-minute walk to ice cream, but what is that walk really like? Are there dangerous intersections or foreboding blocks of surface parking along the way? Put the walkability score to the test by going block by block around your prospective neighborhood (most real estate sites link directly to the property’s Streetview). And it’s not just about walking—find your nearest supermarket and simulate the drive via StreetView. Ditto for the pickup area at your child’s school. You’ll also get a great feel for the development pattern in the surrounding neighborhoods, a strong predictor of a Strong Town. In the days before Streetview, you pretty much had to go to every property in person, many of which you’d rule out for some element you could have determined online, and then stalk the neighborhoods of the ones you liked. Side tip: I use Streetview the same way for travel planning to ensure that what AirBnb calls a “charming neighborhood” really is that, or that my hotel isn’t next to an elevated freeway. 

4. Year Built

Longtime readers of Strong Towns know that we can trace the years in the middle of the 20th century when North America abandoned the traditional development pattern and switched in so many places to the Suburban Experiment. Older neighborhoods tend to have a greater mix of neighborhood-service businesses and housing types, and have evolved and endured over time. Newer suburbs often feature whole subdivisions built to completion, with an auto-dependent layout and no commerce permitted. So if the property you’re considering was built after 1956 and is not in an established city or town neighborhood, there's a much higher chance it's not in a place built along Strong Towns principles. Conversely, a 1923 home in a city like Charlotte or St. Paul is almost certainly part of a historically successful neighborhood. Most real estate sites have a search filter where you can set minimum age to only see older houses. 

My colleague Rachel Quednau took this concept to a fascinating visual level when she was house shopping. She observed how specific housing types were a tipoff to the era and character of a neighborhood, and used Google Maps to show how she could predict whether a neighborhood was walkable.

Note also the strong distinction between suburb and suburban-style development. Early suburbs like Brookline, Massachusetts, or the many streetcar suburbs along Philadelphia’s Main Line followed the traditional development pattern and are now hubs of commercial and social life in their own right as part of an expanded metropolitan area. 

5. Property/Tax History

Strong Towns puts a strong emphasis on walkable urbanism, but a twin pillar is fiscal responsibility and economic resiliency. With the caveat that there are many variable local factors in how real estate is assessed and taxed, viewing the financial history of a property can be illustrative for prospective buyers. A look at the sales history will show whether a house has been a consistent wealth builder for its previous owners over time. Similarly, pay attention to the progression of property taxes. Sudden spikes could reflect rising assessments in a hot real estate market, but may also correspond to a real structural crisis. Also do your financial homework on whether the home is part of a special taxing district, as buyers in those areas may be on the hook for additional development costs.  

Did we miss anything? Give us your tips and tricks to find Strong Towns when you shop for real estate in the comments below, or tag us on social.  

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