Port Orange Real Estate Blog by Lisa Hill, "The Smart Choice" for your real estate needs |
As I was posting the price reduction to all my real estate blogs (using several is great for pushing your web site up the search engines!), for my real estate listing: Daytona Beach house for sale, within walking distance to the beach... as I got to my personal, Trulia real estate blog, I stumbled across a link that questioned the "walkability of the neighborhood". Well I can't say I've ever seen a web site like that before, so my curiosity was piqued. But not only am I a REALTOR®, I'm also a Daytona Beach native, so I already know the statistics and demographics of pretty much any neighborhood; such as whether or not it has sidewalks... how safe it is... and other factors you might want to know, if you like to walk for exercise.
So to do a test on the Walk Score web site, I used my home address as a test subject... and FYI, I live in a gated housing community in Port Orange... (10+ years ago, we knew we wanted to live in Port Orange; and we decided to buy a house in a subdivision, within another subdivision.)
Now before I tell you my own neighborhood's walking score, let me provide a few more details about Port Orange. The whole city of Port Orange has sidewalks on both sides of the street in almost every neighborhood; and even along the sides of the busiest roads! It also has doctors, all sorts of shopping, banking, restaurants, etc., within walking distance of almost every community in the city. It also bears mentioning, the motto for Port Orange is "Unique by Choice, Not by Chance". Needless to say, a LOT of thought has been put into the planning of this beautiful city. Oh, and on a personal note, I frequently walk several miles at a time, sometimes late at night, without a care in the world.
Now to get to my neighborhood score... I input my address and discovered we had been given one of the lowest possible scores. Well, to put it bluntly, that is absurd! So what the heck is the criteria for these supposed walking scores!? I'll let you see for yourself. Just follow the links below. Because the irony gets even better... Check this out!
At the top of the web page, there are links about the sit that say "How it Works" and "How it Doesn't Work". Excuse me for thinking this but if you have to post a link on your own site, that tells you how it goes wrong, you have a serious problem with your system.
So to finalize this, I'm interested in what kind of results you get when you run your own walkability tests. I'm not going to list all the criteria from the How it Works, and How it Doesn't Work links. I'll let you check it out for yourself. And then, I'm VERY interested in what kind of results you get. Run your own little tests, and let me know what you think.
Is the Neighborhood Walkability Score a legitimate test, or a malfunctioning piece of crap? As Broker Bryant would put it... What Say Ye?
*This post is written and copyrighted by Lisa Hill, The Smart Choice logo, and House logos are also copyrighted by Lisa Hill.
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