Is High Crime Rate a Deal Breaker?

Looking at an area with an 84, on the 1 to 100 crime scale on bestplaces.net. The economic climate is good. Unemployment is low 5.2%. Many major employers, Coke, Pepsi, Coors, Budweiser, Honda etc etc. Population 37,000. 200,000 Metro. 11.9% Housing Vacant.

Would this very high crime rate be a deal breaker?

Drill into the crime statistics, and in a lot of cases you can see they are concentrated in a specific part of the town. Or if it’s just blended evenly across the entire town then security of the park perimeter could be put in place as a nice differentiator that would allow you to command market rents, or maybe more.

And what type of crime is it? Petty stuff or violent crimes? Call the police department and see how many calls they get per month to the neighborhood surrounding the park and how that compares to other areas of the town.

If the crime rates are high and concentrated in and around the park you might have larger reputation issues to deal with to turn it around - or alternatively you can accept it and say I am okay to run this type of business. I suspect you don’t want felons as tenants though, and violent crimes in a park can tend to drive people out.

Call the local police department and get someone to answer your questions? What are the other local crime rates for the surrounding areas? If you’re 84 and your competitor parks are in a district with 87, then that gives you a different feeling than if your competitors are in a district with a score of 57.

You’re not going to be able to control the local crime rate. Will it affect your bottom line and/or your sleep at night?

Any crime rate number above 75 generally brings extra scrutiny and some extra rate/charge from an insurance company. That said, as a general rule, park owners are not liable for criminal acts committed by others. The exception can be if you as a park manager knew there was a problem/threat and failed to notify your tenants of the specific threat. Sexual assault or battery (physical non-sexual assault) are the two things any park manager should give notice to all tenants should such an event occur in the park.