Coming soon to your online real estate search: neighborhood crime stats
If you really want to check out the neighbors before you buy, well Trulia is betting it has the search tool for you.
Trulia next Thursday will roll out CrimeMaps, which it bills as a service that will enable "people to view, explore and compare crime in neighborhoods across the U.S."
The initial stats will not include Boston, but data on the Hub will be coming soon, I am told.
Trulia contends its new mapping technology will let you determine which neighborhoods have the least and most crime reports, when crime tends to happen, and even the most dangerous intersections.
Of course, whether this proves to be useful or just a silly gimmick will boil down to not only what kind of information is available but how it is displayed.
Since I haven't had a chance to take a look yet, I can't say.
And it doesn't take a rocket scientist here to see some potential pitfalls, and potential criticism, of a tool like CrimeMapping.
Trulia's argument is that CrimeMapping could help protect a newbie to town from getting sold a bill of goods about how great a particular neighborhood when it is anything but.
Yet if it simply reinforces stereotypes about urban neighborhoods versus the suburbs, well that could be a problem.
