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.
Sunset Park / Valencia Terrace median real estate price is $494,012, which is more expensive than 60.6% of the neighborhoods in Florida and 64.1% of the neighborhoods in the U.S.
The average rental price in Sunset Park / Valencia Terrace is currently $1,313, based on NeighborhoodScout's exclusive analysis. Rents here are currently lower in price than 95.4% of Florida neighborhoods.
Sunset Park / Valencia Terrace is a suburban neighborhood (based on population density) located in Fort Myers, Florida.
Sunset Park / Valencia Terrace real estate is primarily made up of small (studio to two bedroom) to medium sized (three or four bedroom) single-family homes and mobile homes. Most of the residential real estate is occupied by a mixture of owners and renters. Many of the residences in the Sunset Park / Valencia Terrace neighborhood are older, well-established, built between 1940 and 1969. A number of residences were also built between 1970 and 1999.
Sunset Park / Valencia Terrace has a 13.3% vacancy rate, which is well above average compared to other U.S. neighborhoods (higher than 74.7% of American neighborhoods). Most vacant housing here is vacant year round. This could either signal that there is a weak demand for real estate in the neighborhood or that large amount of new housing has been built and not yet occupied. Either way, if you live here, you may find many of the homes or apartments are empty.
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 Fort Myers, the Sunset Park / Valencia Terrace neighborhood, has some outstanding things about the way it looks and its way of life that are worth highlighting.
People
One of the most interesting things about the Sunset Park / Valencia Terrace neighborhood is that it has a greater concentration of residents who live alone than most all neighborhoods in America. With 55.1% of the households here made up of people living alone, NeighborhoodScout's research reveals that this is a larger proportion of people living alone than in 97.6% of the neighborhoods in America.
Diversity
Did you know that the Sunset Park / Valencia Terrace neighborhood has more Brazilian and Cuban ancestry people living in it than nearly any neighborhood in America? It's true! In fact, 14.8% of this neighborhood's residents have Brazilian ancestry and 6.1% have Cuban ancestry.
Sunset Park / Valencia Terrace is also pretty special linguistically. Significantly, 1.3% 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 95.8% of the neighborhoods in America.
Migration / Stability
Do you like to be surrounded by people from all over the country or world, with different perspectives and life experiences? Or do you instead prefer to be in a neighborhood where most residents have lived there for a long time, creating a sense of cohesiveness? NeighborhoodScout's analysis reveals that this neighborhood stands out among American neighborhoods for the uniqueness of the mobility of its residents. More residents of the Sunset Park / Valencia Terrace neighborhood live here today that also were living in this same neighborhood five years ago than is found in 98.3% 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
How wealthy a neighborhood is, from very wealthy, to middle income, to low income is very formative with regard to the personality and character of a neighborhood. Equally important is the rate of people, particularly children, who live below the federal poverty line. In some wealthy gated communities, the areas immediately surrounding can have high rates of childhood poverty, which indicates other social issues. NeighborhoodScout's analysis reveals both aspects of income and poverty for this neighborhood.
The neighbors in the Sunset Park / Valencia Terrace neighborhood in Fort Myers are low income, making it among the lowest income neighborhoods in America. NeighborhoodScout's research shows that this neighborhood has an income lower than 94.0% of U.S. neighborhoods. With 30.2% of the children here below the federal poverty line, this neighborhood has a higher rate of childhood poverty than 82.0% 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 Sunset Park / Valencia Terrace neighborhood, 38.2% of the working population is employed in executive, management, and professional occupations. The second most important occupational group in this neighborhood is manufacturing and laborer occupations, with 29.1% of the residents employed. Other residents here are employed in clerical, assistant, and tech support occupations (17.4%), and 15.3% in sales and service jobs, from major sales accounts, to working in fast food restaurants.
Languages
The languages spoken by people in this neighborhood are diverse. These are tabulated as the languages people preferentially speak when they are at home with their families. The most common language spoken in the Sunset Park / Valencia Terrace neighborhood is English, spoken by 65.6% of households. Other important languages spoken here include Spanish and Polish.
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 Sunset Park / Valencia Terrace neighborhood in Fort Myers, FL, residents most commonly identify their ethnicity or ancestry as English (18.5%). There are also a number of people of Brazilian ancestry (14.8%), and residents who report German roots (10.3%), and some of the residents are also of Irish ancestry (7.7%), along with some Cuban ancestry residents (6.1%), among others. In addition, 23.6% of the residents of this neighborhood were born in another country.
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 Sunset Park / Valencia Terrace neighborhood spend between 15 and 30 minutes commuting one-way to work (42.4% of working residents), which is shorter than the time spent commuting to work for most Americans.
Here most residents (75.0%) 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.
