how important is a walk score?

[Anonymous]

different strokes. I'd rather have a walk score of 10 and just walk around my neighborhood of 1+ acre lots. I walk all the time around here, just not to the store.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Walk Score is very important for certain neighborhoods where walkability is the big selling point. It has little or no importance in areas where home and lot size are more highly valued. It's like asking if the 0-to-60 time is important when buying a car -- yes if you are buying a sports car but no if you are buying a minivan -- completely different products.

Yet I'd still make the point that some suburban neighborhoods have much higher walk scores than others, and walkability is still a factor for some of us buying in the suburbs. For instance my "suburb" is a 65, but my sister's is a 20, and they are both the suburbs as far as city dwellers are concerned but there's a big lifestyle difference between them.

[Anonymous]

I live in the suburbs, so I know the walk score will be lower, and I'm fine with that because I dislike city living -- noise, light pollution, lack of grass, trees, etc.
When I was buying a house recently I looked at walk scores, but also judged for myself whether I could walk to things that mattered to me. For example, I considered two houses, one with a higher walk score b/c it was closer to stores, but we couldn't walk to the elementary or middle schools, or to a local pool. The other house I looked at and bought isn't near shopping, but is terrifically walkable for elementary and middle school and for a local pool. Walking to elementary school is hugely important for me and my son right now, so that was a big factor for me.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

This is not true. These neighborhoods already have a lower price/ square foot built in because they're not walkable. Distance from urban amenities lowers property values.

So do shitty public schools and proximity to shelters, halfway houses and public housing projects.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I live in the suburbs, so I know the walk score will be lower, and I'm fine with that because I dislike city living -- noise, light pollution, lack of grass, trees, etc.
When I was buying a house recently I looked at walk scores, but also judged for myself whether I could walk to things that mattered to me. For example, I considered two houses, one with a higher walk score b/c it was closer to stores, but we couldn't walk to the elementary or middle schools, or to a local pool. The other house I looked at and bought isn't near shopping, but is terrifically walkable for elementary and middle school and for a local pool. Walking to elementary school is hugely important for me and my son right now, so that was a big factor for me.

This is exactly what we're looking at. We like to walk places and currently live on capitol hill. when we move, we are looking for a neighborhood where we can walk to the elementary school, a pool, a playground, a park with trails and such, maybe a library, etc. I do not care at all about walking to get coffee, to the grocery store, to the post office, to restaurants.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

This is not true. These neighborhoods already have a lower price/ square foot built in because they're not walkable. Distance from urban amenities lowers property values.

So do shitty public schools and proximity to shelters, halfway houses and public housing projects.

These are coming to your neighborhood very soon. See "the suburbanization of poverty".

[Anonymous]

I looked it up for my neighborhood, and they have some demonstrably wrong info.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

This is not true. These neighborhoods already have a lower price/ square foot built in because they're not walkable. Distance from urban amenities lowers property values.

So do shitty public schools and proximity to shelters, halfway houses and public housing projects.

you could use a good shag. but it has probably been a while since someone has wanted to bang you, huh?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

These are coming to your neighborhood very soon. See "the suburbanization of poverty".

Not going to happen any time soon. Don't live in a community that looks for ways to add such residents in order to bolster the local Democrats.

If you think density is so great, visit Baltimore. Built for density, and mostly a decrepit pit today.

[Anonymous]

Walk score of this crack house in DC is 72!

http://greatergreaterwashington.org/post/14868/100-year-old-anacostia-abandominium-houses-crack-addict/

[Anonymous]

very, very important to us. We didn't look at certain houses because of the walk scores. And certain we liked we ultimately turned down because of the score. Then again we loved our last house and it had a score of 100, so we knew what we were giving up.

[Anonymous]

kind of weird. my house at the beach has a low walkscore and does not into take into account that the beach is 400 feet away ...

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:kind of weird. my house at the beach has a low walkscore and does not into take into account that the beach is 400 feet away ...

Why are people having such a hard time with this? Walkscore is a single data point that you can use in deciding whether a home is a good fit for you that takes into account grocery stores, shopping, schools, public transportation, etc. If walkability to those locations is important to you, then walk score will matter to you. It is not calculating whether you can go for a walk. If proximity to the beach is important to you, then that's another data point you could take into account, but the point of walk score is not to tell you how close you are to everything under the sun.

[Anonymous]

I'm under a mile from the Silver Spring Metro and we get a 65, which I'm kind of surprised at. I thought it would be higher.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

This is not true. These neighborhoods already have a lower price/ square foot built in because they're not walkable. Distance from urban amenities lowers property values.

So do shitty public schools and proximity to shelters, halfway houses and public housing projects.

My neighborhood, which I love, has all of those things (shitty inboundary public schools, close proximity to shelters, halfway houses, and public housing projects), but it the price/square foot is shockingly high. Although it would be slightly higher with a better inboundary school and fewer shelters, it really couldn't go much higher. Walkability really is that valuable to many, including me.