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.
Shadow Oaks / Balcones Oaks median real estate price is $702,546, which is more expensive than 92.6% of the neighborhoods in Texas and 80.3% of the neighborhoods in the U.S.
The average rental price in Shadow Oaks / Balcones Oaks is currently $2,373, based on NeighborhoodScout's exclusive analysis. The average rental cost in this neighborhood is higher than 79.2% of the neighborhoods in Texas.
Shadow Oaks / Balcones Oaks is a suburban neighborhood (based on population density) located in Austin, Texas.
Shadow Oaks / Balcones Oaks real estate is primarily made up of medium sized (three or four bedroom) to large (four, five or more bedroom) single-family homes and small apartment buildings. Most of the residential real estate is owner occupied. Many of the residences in the Shadow Oaks / Balcones Oaks neighborhood are established but not old, having been built between 1970 and 1999. A number of residences were also built between 1940 and 1969.
Real estate vacancies in Shadow Oaks / Balcones Oaks are 3.6%, which is lower than one will find in 76.5% of American neighborhoods. Demand for real estate in Shadow Oaks / Balcones Oaks 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
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 Austin, the Shadow Oaks / Balcones Oaks neighborhood, has some outstanding things about the way it looks and its way of life that are worth highlighting.
Real Estate
Most neighborhoods are composed of a mixture of ages of homes, but the Shadow Oaks / Balcones Oaks stands out as rather unique in having nearly all of its residential real estate built in one time period, namely between 1970 and 1999, generally considered to be established, but not old housing. What you'll sense when you look around or drive the streets of this neighborhood is that many of the residences look the same because of this similarity of age. In fact, 91.9% of the residential real estate here was built in this one time period.
People
A majority of the adults in the Shadow Oaks / Balcones Oaks neighborhood are wealthy and educated executives. They own stately homes that tend to maintain high real estate appreciation rates. Their upper-level careers keep them busy, but allow them to live comfortably. If you're an executive and want to keep similar company, consider settling in this neighborhood, rated as an executive lifestyle "best choice" neighborhood for Texas by NeighborhoodScout's analysis, which rated it as better for executive lifestyles than 96.8% of the neighborhoods in Texas. In addition to being an excellent choice for highly educated executives, this neighborhood is also a very good choice for urban sophisticates.
Diversity
Did you know that the Shadow Oaks / Balcones Oaks neighborhood has more Czechoslovakian and Danish ancestry people living in it than nearly any neighborhood in America? It's true! In fact, 0.6% of this neighborhood's residents have Czechoslovakian ancestry and 1.9% have Danish ancestry.
Shadow Oaks / Balcones Oaks is also pretty special linguistically. Significantly, 0.7% of its residents five years old and above primarily speak Urdu, which is the national language of Pakistan, at home. While this may seem like a small percentage, it is higher than 96.1% of the neighborhoods in America.
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 Shadow Oaks / Balcones Oaks neighborhood in Austin are wealthy, making it among the 15% highest income neighborhoods in America. NeighborhoodScout's exclusive analysis reveals that this neighborhood has a higher income than 90.0% of the neighborhoods in America. In addition, 0.9% of the children seventeen and under living in this neighborhood are living below the federal poverty line, which is a lower rate of childhood poverty than is found in 79.1% of America's neighborhoods.
What we choose to do for a living reflects who we are. Each neighborhood has a different mix of occupations represented, and together these tell you about the neighborhood and help you understand if this neighborhood may fit your lifestyle.
In the Shadow Oaks / Balcones Oaks neighborhood, 68.9% 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 22.3% of the residents employed. Other residents here are employed in clerical, assistant, and tech support occupations (5.3%), and 3.5% 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 Shadow Oaks / Balcones Oaks neighborhood is English, spoken by 88.1% of households. Other important languages spoken here include Langs. of India, Spanish and Chinese.
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 Shadow Oaks / Balcones Oaks neighborhood in Austin, TX, residents most commonly identify their ethnicity or ancestry as German (24.1%). There are also a number of people of English ancestry (14.9%), and residents who report Irish roots (11.8%), and some of the residents are also of Asian ancestry (8.1%), along with some Italian ancestry residents (5.3%), among others. In addition, 11.7% 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 Shadow Oaks / Balcones Oaks neighborhood spend between 15 and 30 minutes commuting one-way to work (38.6% of working residents), which is shorter than the time spent commuting to work for most Americans.
Here most residents (72.2%) drive alone in a private automobile to get to work. 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.
