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.
Harding Lakes / Mizpah median real estate price is $341,398, which is less expensive than 86.6% of New Jersey neighborhoods and 54.9% of all U.S. neighborhoods.
The average rental price in Harding Lakes / Mizpah is currently $3,007, based on NeighborhoodScout's exclusive analysis. Rents here are currently lower in price than 56.2% of New Jersey neighborhoods.
Harding Lakes / Mizpah is a rural neighborhood (based on population density) located in Mays Landing, New Jersey.
Harding Lakes / Mizpah real estate is primarily made up of medium sized (three or four bedroom) to small (studio to two bedroom) single-family homes and small apartment buildings. Most of the residential real estate is owner occupied. Many of the residences in the Harding Lakes / Mizpah neighborhood are established but not old, having been built between 1970 and 1999. A number of residences were also built between 1940 and 1969.
Home and apartment vacancy rates are 6.2% in Harding Lakes / Mizpah. NeighborhoodScout analysis shows that this rate is lower than 57.2% of the neighborhoods in the nation, approximately near the middle range for vacancies.
Notable & Unique Neighborhood Characteristics
Many things matter about a neighborhood, but the first thing most people notice is the way a neighborhood looks and its particular character. For example, one might notice whether the buildings all date from a certain time period or whether shop signs are in multiple languages. This particular neighborhood in Mays Landing, the Harding Lakes / Mizpah neighborhood, has some outstanding things about the way it looks and its way of life that are worth highlighting.
Modes of Transportation
While most Americans do drive to work alone each day, the Harding Lakes / Mizpah neighborhood stands out by having 88.4% of commuters doing so, which is a higher proportion of people driving alone to work than NeighborhoodScout found in 95.4% of all American neighborhoods.
Diversity
Did you know that the Harding Lakes / Mizpah neighborhood has more Lithuanian and Yugoslav ancestry people living in it than nearly any neighborhood in America? It's true! In fact, 2.7% of this neighborhood's residents have Lithuanian ancestry and 0.6% have Yugoslav ancestry.
Harding Lakes / Mizpah is also pretty special linguistically. Significantly, 1.4% of its residents five years old and above primarily speak Portuguese at home. While this may seem like a small percentage, it is higher than 96.4% of the neighborhoods in America.
Migration / Stability
The freedom of moving to new places versus the comfort of home. How much and how often people move not only can create diverse and worldly neighborhoods, but simultaneously it can produce a loss of intimacy with one's surroundings and a lack of connectedness to one's neighbors. NeighborhoodScout's exclusive research has identified this neighborhood as unique with regard to the transience of its populace. More residents of the Harding Lakes / Mizpah neighborhood live here today that also were living in this same neighborhood five years ago than is found in 98.4% of U.S. neighborhoods. This neighborhood is really made up of people who know each other, don't move often, and have lived here in this very neighborhood for quite a while.
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 Harding Lakes / Mizpah neighborhood in Mays Landing are upper-middle income, making it an above average income neighborhood. NeighborhoodScout's exclusive analysis reveals that this neighborhood has a higher income than 62.1% of the neighborhoods in America. With 16.0% of the children here below the federal poverty line, this neighborhood has a higher rate of childhood poverty than 62.9% of U.S. neighborhoods.
A neighborhood is far different if it is dominated by enlisted military personnel rather than people who earn their living by farming. It is also different if most of the neighbors are clerical support or managers. What is wonderful is the sheer diversity of neighborhoods, allowing you to find the type that fits your lifestyle and aspirations.
In the Harding Lakes / Mizpah neighborhood, 35.7% 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 26.4% of the residents employed. Other residents here are employed in manufacturing and laborer occupations (24.9%), and 13.0% in clerical, assistant, and tech support occupations.
Languages
The most common language spoken in the Harding Lakes / Mizpah neighborhood is English, spoken by 85.8% of households. Some people also speak Spanish (11.2%).
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 Harding Lakes / Mizpah neighborhood in Mays Landing, NJ, residents most commonly identify their ethnicity or ancestry as Irish (22.1%). There are also a number of people of German ancestry (19.3%), and residents who report Italian roots (18.4%), and some of the residents are also of English ancestry (8.5%), along with some South American ancestry residents (7.3%), among others.
Getting to Work
Even if your neighborhood is walkable, you may still have to drive to your place of work. Some neighborhoods are located where many can get to work in just a few minutes, while others are located such that most residents have a long and arduous commute. The greatest number of commuters in Harding Lakes / Mizpah neighborhood spend between 30 and 45 minutes commuting one-way to work (43.6% of working residents), which is at or a bit above the average length of a commute across all U.S. neighborhoods.
Here most residents (88.4%) drive alone in a private automobile to get to work. 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.
