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Does Your Town Make the ‘Safest in the U.S.’ List?
On that long,long, long list of factors determining where on earth (or at least in the U.S.) you should live, one factor consistently rises to the top: Where will you and your loved ones be most safe?
Drumroll, please.
The safest town in the nation this year is Ridgefield, CT, according to NeighborhoodScout, which made its picks by crunching crime data with population densities. Here’s the full top 10 list of places where residents are least likely to be mugged, burgled, murdered—or become victims of any other violent or property crimes—according to the neighborhood information company:
Notably, none of these is a major city, although in many of these towns, urban amenities aren’t far away. Many of the country’s most secure hamlets, it turns out, are bedroom communities located outside larger metropolitan areas.
“The safest towns are overwhelmingly places where people live, but often do not work: the types of communities that are populated by the gainfully employed and their families,” Andrew Schiller, CEO of NeighborhoodScout, said in a statement. “Many of the safest cities also have the best school systems and high rates of college graduates. High-paying jobs are not far away.”
Paul Gervais, a real estate agent at William Pitt Sotheby’s International Realty, in Ridgefield, CT, attributes his town’s vaunted No. 1 ranking to its close-knit community and its relatively close (but not too close) proximity to New York City.
“It’s very Norman Rockwell-esque,” he says of the town in Fairfield County, where homes typically cost in the $600,000 range. “Everybody knows each other.”
There is an ultra-slim, 1 in 382 chance of a Ridgefield resident (or just a visitor) becoming a victim of crime in the course of a year, according to NeighborhoodScout. Not bad! Meanwhile, in East St. Louis, IL, which topped NeighborhoodScout’s earlier list of the most dangerous cities, the likelihood rises to a never-want-to-leave-the-house-again 1 in 13.
Following East St. Louis on the most dangerous list are Camden, NJ, and Detroit, MI.
The post Does Your Town Make the ‘Safest in the U.S.’ List? appeared first on Real Estate News and Advice - realtor.com.
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