from Playborhood Palo Alto / Menlo Park

Guerilla Playborhood Hunting Techniques IV: Visit the Neighborhood and Talk to Neighbors

Posted: 04/28/08 04:11 PM

[NOTE:  This the last in a series of four articles on Guerilla Playborhood Hunting Techniques.  The first article is an introduction to the topic, the second is about researching neighborhood reputations, and the third describes how I research online information about neighbors of a house for sale.]

If the larger neighborhood reputation and my online searching give me a pretty decent feeling about the immediate neighborhood around a house, I’ll visit there to look around and talk to neighbors.  After all, for getting a feeling for a neighborhood, there’s no substitute for talking to neighbors in person and seeing what they actually do.

I’ve found that the best time to go - i.e. the best time to see kids play outside - is late afternoon, between 4 and 5:30, any day.  I’ll go earlier during the winter, when the sun goes down early, and perhaps a bit later during the longest and hottest days of summer.  Nothing is a better indicator of the potential of your kids playing in a neighborhood than seeing kids your kids’ ages playing there when you visit.  So, as soon as I see this, without looking any further, the house becomes a candidate for purchase.

Continued on Playborhood Palo Alto / Menlo Park…

by Mike Lanza

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