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.
Peaceful Valley / West Spokane median real estate price is $498,176, which is less expensive than 68.4% of Washington neighborhoods and 43.4% of all U.S. neighborhoods.
The average rental price in Peaceful Valley / West Spokane is currently $1,632, based on NeighborhoodScout's exclusive analysis. Rents here are currently lower in price than 85.0% of Washington neighborhoods.
Peaceful Valley / West Spokane is a suburban neighborhood (based on population density) located in Spokane, Washington.
Peaceful Valley / West Spokane real estate is primarily made up of small (studio to two bedroom) to medium sized (three or four bedroom) apartment complexes/high-rise apartments and single-family homes. Most of the residential real estate is renter occupied. Many of the residences in the Peaceful Valley / West Spokane neighborhood are newer, built in 2000 or more recently. A number of residences were also built before 1940.
Real estate vacancies in Peaceful Valley / West Spokane are 4.1%, which is lower than one will find in 71.3% of American neighborhoods. Demand for real estate in Peaceful Valley / West Spokane is above average for the U.S., and may signal some demand for either price increases or new construction of residential product for this neighborhood.
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.
People
Astoundingly, the Peaceful Valley / West Spokane neighborhood has one of the highest concentrations of divorcees living here than of any neighborhood, a higher concentration than NeighborhoodScout found in 99.2% of U.S. neighborhoods. This may be because people living here divorce more often than others, or that divorced people move here after they become divorced. If you are divorced, you will be in good company in this particular Spokane neighborhood.
In addition, an extraordinary 13.5% of the residents of the Peaceful Valley / West Spokane 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.
Also, one of the unique characteristics of the Peaceful Valley / West Spokane neighborhood revealed by analysis is that the per capita income of residents here is lower than that found in 95.7% of the neighborhoods in America.
Modes of Transportation
Our research revealed that more commuters here take the bus to work (15.8% ride the bus) than 97.8% of all American neighborhoods. If you like the idea of leaving your car and home and hopping the bus to work, this might be a good neighborhood for you to consider.
Real Estate
One of the really unique and interesting things about the look and setting of the Peaceful Valley / West Spokane neighborhood is that it is almost entirely dominated by large apartment buildings, such as apartment complexes or high-rise apartments. 73.2% of the residential real estate here is classified as such. This puts this neighborhood on the map as having a higher proportion of large apartment buildings than 95.6% of all neighborhoods in America.
Diversity
Did you know that the Peaceful Valley / West Spokane neighborhood has more Irish and Arab ancestry people living in it than nearly any neighborhood in America? It's true! In fact, 26.3% of this neighborhood's residents have Irish ancestry and 4.0% have Arab ancestry.
Peaceful Valley / West Spokane is also pretty special linguistically. Significantly, 0.6% of its residents five years old and above primarily speak Japanese at home. While this may seem like a small percentage, it is higher than 95.6% of the neighborhoods in America.
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 Peaceful Valley / West Spokane neighborhood in Spokane are low income, making it among the lowest income neighborhoods in America. NeighborhoodScout's research shows that this neighborhood has an income lower than 95.7% of U.S. neighborhoods. With 32.8% of the children here below the federal poverty line, this neighborhood has a higher rate of childhood poverty than 84.3% of U.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 Peaceful Valley / West Spokane neighborhood, 48.0% 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 21.2% of the residents employed. Other residents here are employed in clerical, assistant, and tech support occupations (19.7%), and 10.7% in manufacturing and laborer occupations.
Languages
The most common language spoken in the Peaceful Valley / West Spokane neighborhood is English, spoken by 87.8% of households.
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 Peaceful Valley / West Spokane neighborhood in Spokane, WA, residents most commonly identify their ethnicity or ancestry as Irish (26.3%). There are also a number of people of German ancestry (23.0%), and residents who report English roots (7.3%), and some of the residents are also of Mexican ancestry (6.6%), along with some Scottish ancestry residents (5.3%), 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 Peaceful Valley / West Spokane neighborhood spend under 15 minutes commuting one-way to work (41.8% of working residents), one of the shortest commutes across America.
Here most residents (62.0%) drive alone in a private automobile to get to work. In addition, quite a number also ride the bus to get to work (15.8%) and 11.1% of residents also carpool with coworkers, friends, or neighbors for their daily commute. 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.
