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.
Sky Lake median real estate price is $383,998, which is more expensive than 41.8% of the neighborhoods in Florida and 52.5% of the neighborhoods in the U.S.
The average rental price in Sky Lake is currently $2,126, based on NeighborhoodScout's exclusive analysis. Rents here are currently lower in price than 71.5% of Florida neighborhoods.
Sky Lake is an urban neighborhood (based on population density) located in Orlando, Florida.
Sky Lake real estate is primarily made up of medium sized (three or four bedroom) to large (four, five or more bedroom) single-family homes and apartment complexes/high-rise apartments. Most of the residential real estate is occupied by a mixture of owners and renters. Many of the residences in the Sky Lake neighborhood are older, well-established, built between 1940 and 1969. A number of residences were also built between 1970 and 1999.
Sky Lake has a 10.2% vacancy rate, which is well above average compared to other U.S. neighborhoods (higher than 62.4% 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
When you see a neighborhood for the first time, the most important thing is often the way it looks, like its homes and its setting. Some places look the same, but they only reveal their true character after living in them for a while because they contain a unique mix of occupational or cultural groups. This neighborhood is very unique in some important ways, according to NeighborhoodScout's exclusive exploration and analysis.
Occupations
There are more people living in the Sky Lake neighborhood employed as sales and service workers (61.7%) than almost any neighborhood in the country. From fast-food service workers to major sales accounts, sales and service workers make up the largest proportion of our national employment picture. But despite that size and importance nationally, this neighborhood still stands out as unique due to the dominance of people living here who work in such occupations.
Length of Commute
Regardless of the means by which residents commute, this neighborhood has a length of commute that is notable. Long commutes can be brutal. They take time, money, and energy, leaving less of you for yourself and your family. The residents of the Sky Lake neighborhood unfortunately have the distinction of having, on average, a longer commute than most any neighborhood in America. 9.9% of commuters here travel more than one hour just one-way to work. That is more than two hours per day. This percentage with two-hour + round-trip commutes is higher than NeighborhoodScout found in 95.3% of all neighborhoods in America.
Diversity
Did you know that the Sky Lake neighborhood has more Puerto Rican and Cuban ancestry people living in it than nearly any neighborhood in America? It's true! In fact, 31.5% of this neighborhood's residents have Puerto Rican ancestry and 10.7% have Cuban ancestry.
Sky Lake is also pretty special linguistically. Significantly, 64.7% of its residents five years old and above primarily speak Spanish at home. This is a higher percentage than 96.6% of all U.S. neighborhoods.
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 Sky Lake neighborhood in Orlando are lower-middle income, making it a below average income neighborhood. NeighborhoodScout's research shows that this neighborhood has an income lower than 72.0% of U.S. neighborhoods. With 25.9% of the children here below the federal poverty line, this neighborhood has a higher rate of childhood poverty than 76.6% 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 Sky Lake neighborhood, 38.3% of the working population is employed in sales and service jobs, from major sales accounts, to working in fast food restaurants. The second most important occupational group in this neighborhood is manufacturing and laborer occupations, with 23.0% of the residents employed. Other residents here are employed in executive, management, and professional occupations (19.5%), and 19.3% in clerical, assistant, and tech support occupations.
Languages
The most common language spoken in the Sky Lake neighborhood is Spanish, spoken by 64.7% of households. Some people also speak English (34.2%).
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 Sky Lake neighborhood in Orlando, FL, residents most commonly identify their ethnicity or ancestry as Puerto Rican (31.5%). There are also a number of people of Cuban ancestry (10.7%), and residents who report Mexican roots (7.8%), and some of the residents are also of South American ancestry (5.0%), along with some Irish ancestry residents (3.8%), among others. In addition, 30.8% of the residents of this neighborhood were born in another country.
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 Sky Lake neighborhood spend between 30 and 45 minutes commuting one-way to work (39.2% of working residents), which is at or a bit above the average length of a commute across all U.S. neighborhoods. However, there is also a significant group of residents (9.9%) who commute over an hour in each direction.
Here most residents (79.3%) drive alone in a private automobile to get to work. In addition, quite a number also carpool with coworkers, friends, or neighbors to get to work (7.0%) . 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.
