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.
Midtown West median real estate price is $649,289, which is more expensive than 57.2% of the neighborhoods in New Jersey and 73.4% of the neighborhoods in the U.S.
The average rental price in Midtown West is currently $2,583, based on NeighborhoodScout's exclusive analysis. Rents here are currently lower in price than 79.3% of New Jersey neighborhoods.
Midtown West is a densely urban neighborhood (based on population density) located in Elizabeth, New Jersey.
Midtown West real estate is primarily made up of small (studio to two bedroom) to medium sized (three or four bedroom) apartment complexes/high-rise apartments and small apartment buildings. Most of the residential real estate is renter occupied. Many of the residences in the Midtown West neighborhood are older, well-established, built between 1940 and 1969. A number of residences were also built between 2000 and the present.
Real estate vacancies in Midtown West are 5.5%, which is lower than one will find in 62.8% of American neighborhoods. Demand for real estate in Midtown West is above average for the U.S., and may signal some demand for either price increases or new construction of residential product for this neighborhood.
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.
Modes of Transportation
Our research revealed that more commuters here take the bus to work (21.1% ride the bus) than 98.8% of all American neighborhoods. If you like the idea of leaving your car and home and hopping the bus to work, this might be a good neighborhood for you to consider.
Real Estate
One of the really unique and interesting things about the look and setting of the Midtown West neighborhood is that it is almost entirely dominated by large apartment buildings, such as apartment complexes or high-rise apartments. 86.3% of the residential real estate here is classified as such. This puts this neighborhood on the map as having a higher proportion of large apartment buildings than 97.6% of all neighborhoods in America.
In addition, the Midtown West neighborhood is very unique in that it has one of the highest proportions of one, two, or no bedroom real estate of any neighborhood in America. Most neighborhoods have a mixture of home or apartment sizes from small to large, but here the concentration of studios and other small living spaces is at near-record heights. With 88.7% of the real estate here of this small size, this most assuredly is a notable feature that makes this neighborhood unique, along with just a handful of other neighborhoods in the U.S. that share this characteristic.
Furthermore, renter-occupied real estate is dominant in the Midtown West neighborhood. The percentage of rental real estate here, according to exclusive NeighborhoodScout analysis, is 91.6%, which is higher than 97.2% of the neighborhoods in America. If you were to buy and live in the property you bought here, you would be almost alone in doing so.
Also of note, if you like crowded places, then you will probably enjoy the the Midtown West neighborhood. According to NeighborhoodScout's exclusive data analysis, this neighborhood is more densely populated than 96.9% of neighborhoods in the U.S., with 29,562 people per square mile living here.
Car Ownership
We Americans love our cars. Not only are they a necessity for most Americans due to the shape of our neighborhoods and the distances between where we live, work, shop, and go to school, but we also fancy them. As a result, most households in America have one, two, or three cars. But NeighborhoodScout's exclusive analysis shows that the Midtown West neighborhood has a highly unusual pattern of car ownership. 32.6% of the households in this neighborhood don't own a car at all. This is more carless households than NeighborhoodScout found in 97.4% of U.S. neighborhoods.
Diversity
Did you know that the Midtown West neighborhood has more South American and Arab ancestry people living in it than nearly any neighborhood in America? It's true! In fact, 30.4% of this neighborhood's residents have South American ancestry and 8.5% have Arab ancestry.
Midtown West is also pretty special linguistically. Significantly, 6.8% of its residents five years old and above primarily speak Arabic at home. While this may seem like a small percentage, it is higher than 99.1% 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. What is interesting to note, is that the Midtown West neighborhood has a greater percentage of residents born in another country (54.4%) than are found in 98.5% 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 Midtown West neighborhood in Elizabeth are low income, making it among the lowest income neighborhoods in America. NeighborhoodScout's research shows that this neighborhood has an income lower than 94.6% of U.S. neighborhoods. With 34.3% of the children here below the federal poverty line, this neighborhood has a higher rate of childhood poverty than 85.0% 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 Midtown West neighborhood, 39.4% of the working population is employed in manufacturing and laborer occupations. The second most important occupational group in this neighborhood is sales and service jobs, from major sales accounts, to working in fast food restaurants, with 23.1% of the residents employed. Other residents here are employed in executive, management, and professional occupations (22.3%), and 15.2% in clerical, assistant, and tech support occupations.
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 Midtown West neighborhood is Spanish, spoken by 63.4% of households. Other important languages spoken here include English, Arabic, African languages and French.
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 Midtown West neighborhood in Elizabeth, NJ, residents most commonly identify their ethnicity or ancestry as South American (30.4%). There are also a number of people of Dominican ancestry (14.2%), and residents who report Arab roots (8.5%), and some of the residents are also of Puerto Rican ancestry (7.8%), along with some Sub-Saharan African ancestry residents (5.0%), among others. In addition, 54.4% 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 Midtown West neighborhood spend between 15 and 30 minutes commuting one-way to work (48.0% of working residents), which is shorter than the time spent commuting to work for most Americans.
Here most residents (50.6%) drive alone in a private automobile to get to work. In addition, quite a number also ride the bus to get to work (21.1%) and 14.3% of residents also carpool with coworkers, friends, or neighbors for their daily commute. 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.
