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.
Chinatown median real estate price is $899,897, which is more expensive than 59.7% of the neighborhoods in California and 90.1% of the neighborhoods in the U.S.
The average rental price in Chinatown is currently $2,536, based on NeighborhoodScout's exclusive analysis. Rents here are currently lower in price than 70.7% of California neighborhoods.
Chinatown is a densely urban neighborhood (based on population density) located in Los Angeles, California.
Chinatown 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 single-family homes. Most of the residential real estate is renter occupied. Many of the residences in the Chinatown neighborhood are newer, built in 2000 or more recently. A number of residences were also built between 1970 and 1999.
In Chinatown, the current vacancy rate is 2.1%, which is a lower rate of vacancies than 85.9% of all neighborhoods in the U.S. This means that the housing supply in Chinatown is very tight compared to the demand for property here.
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 Los Angeles, the Chinatown neighborhood, has some outstanding things about the way it looks and its way of life that are worth highlighting.
Real Estate
97.8% of the real estate in the Chinatown neighborhood is occupied by renters, which is nearly the highest rate of renter occupancy of any neighborhood in America.
In addition, one of the really unique and interesting things about the look and setting of the Chinatown neighborhood is that it is almost entirely dominated by large apartment buildings, such as apartment complexes or high-rise apartments. 87.7% 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 97.8% of all neighborhoods in America.
Furthermore, the Chinatown 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 87.1% 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.
Also of note, if you like crowded places, then you will probably enjoy the the Chinatown neighborhood. According to NeighborhoodScout's exclusive data analysis, this neighborhood is more densely populated than 95.2% of neighborhoods in the U.S., with 21,055 people per square mile living here.
Diversity
Did you know that the Chinatown neighborhood has more Asian ancestry people living in it than nearly any neighborhood in America? It's true! In fact, 58.5% of this neighborhood's residents have Asian ancestry.
Chinatown is also pretty special linguistically. Significantly, 38.0% of its residents five years old and above primarily speak Chinese at home. While this may seem like a small percentage, it is higher than 99.8% of the neighborhoods in America.
Migration / Stability
The freedom of moving to new places versus the comfort of home. How much and how often people move not only can create diverse and worldly neighborhoods, but simultaneously it can produce a loss of intimacy with one's surroundings and a lack of connectedness to one's neighbors. NeighborhoodScout's exclusive research has identified this neighborhood as unique with regard to the transience of its populace. What is interesting to note, is that the Chinatown neighborhood has a greater percentage of residents born in another country (57.7%) than are found in 98.9% of all U.S. neighborhoods.
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 Chinatown neighborhood in Los Angeles are low income, making it among the lowest income neighborhoods in America. NeighborhoodScout's research shows that this neighborhood has an income lower than 100.0% of U.S. neighborhoods. With 41.5% of the children here below the federal poverty line, this neighborhood has a higher rate of childhood poverty than 89.9% 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 Chinatown neighborhood, 40.0% of the working population is employed in executive, management, and professional 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 35.2% of the residents employed. Other residents here are employed in clerical, assistant, and tech support occupations (15.2%), and 9.6% in manufacturing and laborer 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 Chinatown neighborhood is Chinese, spoken by 38.0% of households. Other important languages spoken here include English, Spanish, Korean and Tagalog (the first language of the Philippine region).
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 Chinatown neighborhood in Los Angeles, CA, residents most commonly identify their ethnicity or ancestry as Asian (58.5%). There are also a number of people of Mexican ancestry (7.7%), and residents who report Sub-Saharan African roots (2.6%), and some of the residents are also of Polish ancestry (1.6%), along with some German ancestry residents (1.6%), among others. In addition, 57.7% 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 Chinatown neighborhood spend between 15 and 30 minutes commuting one-way to work (42.1% of working residents), which is shorter than the time spent commuting to work for most Americans.
Here most residents (56.8%) drive alone in a private automobile to get to work. In addition, quite a number also hop out the door and walk to work to get to work (9.7%) and 9.2% 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.
