NeighborhoodScout's Top 5 Best Buy Towns in Greater Houston

WOONSOCKET, RI (May 13, 2004) - In every hot metropolitan area there are hidden bargain neighborhoods that offer quality without the high prices. Finding these hidden gems can be a challenge, especially in a hot real estate market. But you can get the inside track on great areas to buy a home by targeting one of the Houston area's top 5 undervalued towns.

"Housing prices are at all-time highs in many parts of the country, making house-hunting tough work, and particularly difficult if you are trying to buy into a top-quality community," says Andrew Schiller, president of Location, Inc. and a PhD geographer who specializes in American demography. "Undervalued towns can be great places to look because you can buy into a premium neighborhood and still find a good deal on a house - even in today's market."

"Undervalued towns are towns with many premium qualities, like good public schools, low crime rates, educated neighbors, and owner-occupied single family homes, but where median home prices are surprisingly low compared to similar neighborhoods in the area," says Schiller. "None of these communities are cheap, but they are relative bargains because of the quality of communities they are."

Schiller found the top 5 undervalued towns in the Houston area by using NeighborhoodScout®, a web-based neighborhood search engine he developed that covers all 61,000 neighborhoods in the U.S.

Homebuyers can try NeighborhoodScout for free at www.neighborhoodscout.com. Some of the features are reserved for subscribers.

"You can find your own great towns by going to the web site and describing your ideal neighborhood, based on your own criteria," says Schiller. "Whatever type of community you are looking for, and however much you want to spend, NeighborhoodScout can help you find the right answer."

Here are NeighborhoodScout's top 5 undervalued towns for the Houston area:

All the towns are within 40 miles of the center city.

Here are NeighborhoodScout's top 10 undervalued towns in America's 10 biggest metro areas for 2004 (by metro area from east to west):

Metro Region	Top Undervalued Town
Boston	Holden, MA
New York	East Meadow, NY
Philadelphia	Medford, NJ
Washington, D.C.	Silver Spring, MD
Detroit	Lathrop Village, MI
Chicago	Schaumburg, IL
Dallas-Fort Worth	Richardson, TX
Houston	Sugar Land, TX
San Francisco	Antioch, CA
Los Angeles	Carson, CA

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, 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 Office of Federal Housing Enterprise Oversight, and queried directly with NeighborhoodScout.

About Location Inc

Location Inc™ is a Rhode Island-based company born of university research, specializing in nationwide relocation software, retail site selection, and real estate investment advising.