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.
Gay Street median real estate price is $154,682, which is less expensive than 93.8% of Maryland neighborhoods and 86.2% of all U.S. neighborhoods.
The average rental price in Gay Street is currently $2,096, based on NeighborhoodScout's exclusive analysis. Rents here are currently lower in price than 73.5% of Maryland neighborhoods.
Gay Street is a densely urban neighborhood (based on population density) located in Baltimore, Maryland.
Gay Street real estate is primarily made up of small (studio to two bedroom) to medium sized (three or four bedroom) apartment complexes/high-rise apartments and townhomes. Most of the residential real estate is renter occupied. Many of the residences in the Gay Street neighborhood are newer, built in 2000 or more recently. A number of residences were also built between 1970 and 1999.
Home and apartment vacancy rates are 7.3% in Gay Street. NeighborhoodScout analysis shows that this rate is lower than 52.2% of the neighborhoods in the nation, approximately near the middle range for vacancies.
Notable & Unique Neighborhood Characteristics
The way a neighborhood looks and feels when you walk or drive around it, from its setting, its buildings, and its flavor, can make all the difference. This neighborhood has some really cool things about the way it looks and feels as revealed by NeighborhoodScout's exclusive research. This might include anything from the housing stock to the types of households living here to how people get around.
Modes of Transportation
More people in Gay Street choose to walk to work each day (34.8%) than almost any neighborhood in America. If you are attracted to the idea of being able to walk to work, this neighborhood could be a good choice.
Also, more people ride the bus in this neighborhood each day to get to work than 98.8% of U.S. neighborhoods.
People
One of the most interesting things about the Gay Street neighborhood is that it has a greater concentration of residents who live alone than most all neighborhoods in America. With 59.1% of the households here made up of people living alone, NeighborhoodScout's research reveals that this is a larger proportion of people living alone than in 98.7% of the neighborhoods in America.
In addition, the Gay Street neighborhood stands out for having an average per capita income lower than 98.4% of the neighborhoods in the United States.
Real Estate
Renter-occupied real estate is dominant in the Gay Street neighborhood. The percentage of rental real estate here, according to exclusive NeighborhoodScout analysis, is 95.7%, which is higher than 98.2% of the neighborhoods in America. If you were to buy and live in the property you bought here, you would be almost alone in doing so.
In addition, the real estate in the Gay Street neighborhood really stands out in the way it looks for a unique reason: this neighborhood has a higher proportion of apartment complexes or high-rise apartments than nearly every neighborhood in the country. Most neighborhoods are a mixture of real estate and housing types, but here it is almost entirely dominated by big apartment buildings and complexes. In fact, 79.0% of the real estate here is classified as apartment complexes or high-rise apartments, which is more than is found in 96.6% of American neighborhoods.
Car Ownership
We Americans love our cars. Not only are they a necessity for most Americans due to the shape of our neighborhoods and the distances between where we live, work, shop, and go to school, but we also fancy them. As a result, most households in America have one, two, or three cars. But NeighborhoodScout's exclusive analysis shows that the Gay Street neighborhood has a highly unusual pattern of car ownership. 26.0% of the households in this neighborhood don't own a car at all. This is more carless households than NeighborhoodScout found in 96.6% of U.S. neighborhoods.
Diversity
Did you know that the Gay Street neighborhood has more Cuban ancestry people living in it than nearly any neighborhood in America? It's true! In fact, 4.6% of this neighborhood's residents have Cuban ancestry.
Gay Street is also pretty special linguistically. Significantly, 1.8% of its residents five years old and above primarily speak Japanese at home. While this may seem like a small percentage, it is higher than 98.8% of the neighborhoods in America.
The Neighbors
There are two complementary measures for understanding the income of a neighborhood's residents: the average and the extremes. While a neighborhood may be relatively wealthy overall, it is equally important to understand the rate of people - particularly children - who are living at or below the federal poverty line, which is extremely low income. Some neighborhoods with a lower average income may actually have a lower childhood poverty rate than another with a higher average income, and this helps us understand the conditions and character of a neighborhood.
The neighbors in the Gay Street neighborhood in Baltimore are low income, making it among the lowest income neighborhoods in America. NeighborhoodScout's research shows that this neighborhood has an income lower than 98.4% of U.S. neighborhoods. With 14.5% of the children here below the federal poverty line, this neighborhood has a higher rate of childhood poverty than 59.3% of U.S. neighborhoods.
The old saying "you are what you eat" is true. But it is also true that you are what you do for a living. The types of occupations your neighbors have shape their character, and together as a group, their collective occupations shape the culture of a place.
In the Gay Street neighborhood, 42.4% 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 33.8% of the residents employed. Other residents here are employed in clerical, assistant, and tech support occupations (14.5%), and 9.3% in manufacturing and laborer occupations.
Languages
The most common language spoken in the Gay Street neighborhood is English, spoken by 84.9% of households. Some people also speak Chinese (7.7%).
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 Gay Street neighborhood in Baltimore, MD, residents most commonly identify their ethnicity or ancestry as Asian (13.8%). There are also a number of people of Cuban ancestry (4.6%), and residents who report English roots (1.6%), and some of the residents are also of German ancestry (1.5%), along with some Polish ancestry residents (1.3%), among others. In addition, 13.7% of the residents of this neighborhood were born in another country.
Getting to Work
How you get to work – car, bus, train or other means – and how much of your day it takes to do so is a large quality of life and financial issue. Especially with gasoline prices rising and expected to continue doing so, the length and means of one's commute can be a financial burden. Some neighborhoods are physically located so that many residents have to drive in their own car, others are set up so many walk to work, or can take a train, bus, or bike. The greatest number of commuters in Gay Street neighborhood spend under 15 minutes commuting one-way to work (39.6% of working residents), one of the shortest commutes across America.
Here most residents (34.8%) hop out the door and walk to work to get to work. In addition, quite a number also drive alone in a private automobile to get to work (22.8%) and 21.3% of residents also ride the bus for their daily commute. This is a special neighborhood for the number of people who walk to work. Combining exercise, low cost, and reduced pollution, plus the chance to see your neighbors, walking to work is fairly uncommon in America but likely to increase as people try to reduce their dependence on automobiles, and this neighborhood offers that opportunity today.
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.
