CONTACTS:
Paul Gallagher
Director of Marketing
Location, Inc.
marketing@locationinc.com

WORCESTER, MA (February 24, 2003) – Before you shop for a new house, take a close look at the neighborhood. You could buy into a high quality town at a great price in any of the country’s biggest metro areas if you target one of America’s top 10 undervalued towns.

“Undervalued towns are towns with many premium-qualities, like good public schools, low crime rates, and educated neighbors, but where median home prices are surprisingly low compared to other area towns,” says Andrew Schiller, president of Location Inc™.

Schiller, a PhD geographer, studied America’s 61,000 census tracks, or neighborhoods, using data from the Census Bureau, Department of Education, Federal Housing Authority, and even the FBI. The result is one of the largest single neighborhood-matching databases anywhere.

“We call it NeighborhoodScout™, and it’s accessible over the Internet,” says Schiller. “You can describe your ideal neighborhood and find best matches in any area of the country.”

Schiller created his top 10 undervalued towns list by using NeighborhoodScout to search in the nation’s 10 biggest metro areas, using criteria important to many homebuyers: excellent public schools, low crime rates, owner-occupied single-family homes, and educated neighbors – all at prices well below comparable neighborhoods in each metro area. All the towns are within 40 miles of the center city.

If you’re moving to Los Angeles and looking for a great deal on a great town, check out Simi Valley first. Relocating to Philadelphia? You could get a terrific deal by moving to nearby Havertown.

“People want good places for their families, but prices can be prohibitive. Using these simple criteria, I discovered great options for real people right in the metro areas in which many Americans live and work,” says Schiller.

Here are the top 10:

• Scotch Plains, NJ (New York)
• Simi Valley, CA (Los Angeles)
• Mundelein, IL (Chicago)
• Silver Spring, MD (Washington, D.C.)
• Dublin, CA (San Francisco)
• Havertown, PA (Philadelphia)
• Sharon, MA (Boston)
• Lathrup Village, MI (Detroit)
• Colleyville, TX (Dallas- Fort Worth)
• Sugar Land, TX (Houston)

Homebuyers can try NeighborhoodScout for free at www.neighborhoodscout.com.

Editor’s Note

“Educated neighbors” means people 25 and up with college degrees or graduate degrees. “Excellent public schools” means combined measures of spending per pupil on core instruction, combined with student-to-teacher ratios (smaller classes and more personal attention to students), and graduation rates. “Crime” is all FBI crime index scores – both violent and property – as a rate per 1,000 population for the community. “Owner-occupied” single-family homes mean the neighborhood is primarily composed of detached single-family homes owned by their occupants. Data were derived from the FBI and US Justice Department, the US Bureau of the Census, the National Center for Education Statistics, and the Federal Housing Authority, and queried directly with NeighborhoodScout.

About Location Inc

Location Inc is a Massachusetts-based company born of university research, specializing in nationwide relocation software, retail site selection, and real estate investment advising. Learn more about NeighborhoodScout at www.neighborhoodscout.com.