Which areas have the lowest crime rates?

This is a completely reasonable question to ask when you're choosing where to live — and it's also one that real estate agents are legally and ethically prohibited from answering directly. Here's why, and here's how to actually get the information you're looking for.

Why an agent won't tell you a neighborhood is "safe" or "unsafe"

Under the federal Fair Housing Act, real estate professionals are prohibited from steering buyers toward or away from a particular area based on characterizations that are often tied, directly or indirectly, to the demographics of who lives there. Historically, vague "safety" or "good area" comments have been used to do exactly that, even unintentionally. Because of this, agents are trained to avoid subjective characterizations of neighborhood safety altogether — not because we don't understand why you're asking, but because it's the law, and because it's the right way to make sure every client gets the same objective, data-based service.

What an agent can do is point you toward the same public, objective data sources anyone can access, so you can research and draw your own conclusions.

How to research this yourself

• Local police department data: Most city and county police departments publish crime maps or open-data dashboards showing reported incidents by location and type.
• City and county open-data portals: Many municipalities publish raw incident-level data that you can filter by date, category, and area.
• Third-party aggregator sites: Sites like NeighborhoodScout and similar services compile crime statistics into area-level scores, which can be a useful starting point.
• Talking to current residents: Neighbors, local business owners, and community Facebook or Nextdoor groups can offer on-the-ground perspective that data alone doesn't capture.

A caution about relying on any single tool

Online crime maps and scoring tools are a useful starting point, but they have real limitations worth keeping in mind:

• Reporting lag: Data is often weeks or months behind actual incidents.
• Inconsistent reporting standards: Different police departments categorize and report crime differently, which makes cross-jurisdiction comparisons less reliable than they look.
• Aggregation and scoring methods vary: A single "safety score" can obscure a lot of nuance about what kinds of incidents are actually being counted.

For that reason, it's worth cross-referencing more than one source, and weighting recent, primary-source police data more heavily than any single aggregated score.

This page is for general educational purposes only and does not characterize the safety of any specific area. Consistent with fair housing law, The Brooksby Team does not provide subjective assessments of neighborhood safety. We're glad to point you toward public data sources so you can research and draw your own conclusions.