Essential House hunting Research

 If you're looking for a below market value property then the auctions have to be your first port of call.  You'll already have a list in your head of what you're looking for.  Maybe you want to be near to a particular station, or in the catchments area of a good school.  Maybe you specifically want 3 bedrooms and a garage and have easy access to a motorway, but what about other aspects?

Just finding a house you like and it meeting your outline criteria might not feel like it's enough.  Maybe you're wondering other issues, like crime, or global warming, so where do you find all that out?

Here is a resource of some other ways to view the house, or the area that you are thinking of moving into.  While finding the right house is essential, the information given here is intended for recreational use only, although it might easily raise issues you hadn't thought about before - enabling you to research a particular house or area from a different viewpoint.

The resources here for house hunting look at how close a house is to local services, whether it's potentially safe from sea level rises and even crime maps from the police.

Global Warming and Rising Sea Level: Will It Flood From Global Warming?

This is a great little "what if" map. You can choose different rises in sea level and the map instantly shows you if any property you live in, or are thinking of buying, would potentially be underwater if the sea levels rose by the amount you pick.

http://flood.firetree.net/

The map can be dragged around; you can zoom in and zoom out. 

In the top left hand corner you can alter the amount of sea level rises.

In the bottom left there is a link which will enable you to link directly into where you're interested in, ideal for sharing the information or results, or just book marking for your own information.

Local Crime Figures & Stats

UK Police forces are starting to generate crime maps; hopefully this will extend across the country and not just in London.

Metropolitan Police Crime Map

On this crime map, London's boroughs are colour-coded, showing how crime rates in each borough compare to the London average. The crime map also shows whether crime in the area is rising or falling.

http://maps.met.police.uk/

You can select to just show certain types of crime, such as Residential Burglary. Once you select these from the drop down boxes and press GO, the map instantly changes to show the results.

Map of Anti-Social Behaviour

By choosing Anti-Social on the drop down list, you can see a map of where anti-social behaviour has been reported.

London Profiler

If you want one map to use to be able to profile an area in London without using lots of resources, then check out London Profiler With this map, you can visualise your neighbourhood's profile using different area classifications.

http://www.londonprofiler.org/

You'll need to spend some time looking through it, but it is useful if you want to live in an area that has particular attributes such as living with, or away from, an ethnic minority. Or living in an area where average income is higher than the rest. Whatever type of area you're looking for, or to check up on, it's here - although it might take you 10 minutes to go through a few scenarios to realise how it's working... after that you're cooking on gas!

Crime Map of London

Although the crime map part of London Profiler uses the Metropolitan Police dataset, it enables you to drill down into much more detailed statistics.

London Journey Planner

If you're looking at property in London, you might want to know how long the public transport will take you to get to work, or other places you need to be. 

Use this handy London Journey Planner: http://journeyplanner.tfl.gov.uk

 

UK Local Area Research

Local Area Scoring

UK postcode search for local area information including census statistics, house prices, council tax, energy prices and more in England and Wales

http://www.uklocalarea.com/

Simply key in the postcode for any property you're interested in and get the scores for everything from crime to local amenities, income and overall deprivation of an area.

Each area displays a "Quality of Life Indicator", which is based on the Index of Deprivation. This gives you an instant measure of the quality of life in that area compared to other areas in the country, where England and Wales are separate countries.

You can see the quality of life for all regions in an area when searching by area name.

Rate and review areas yourself. If you are not happy with the official government rating, now you can have your say on UK Local Area!

 Check out http://www.virtualhomes.com/mls for a map based search tool with direct MLS access in NH and MA. No registration required.