After a few weeks of looking at houses online and in person, I’ve put my house hunt on hold. A number of factors are at work in this decision, including delusional pricing by home sellers and not having 20% to put down to save myself from exorbitant insurance rates. We’ll pick up again after having another year of saving and see where we are at with everything. Hopefully the housing market will be significantly more sane by then.

When thinking about moving into an area, you should always have as much information about that area as possible. That includes knowing if there could potentially be a risk of having a Sex Offender living near by. Arizona provides a way to see if there are any higher-risk sex offenders near an address on their Sex Offender InfoCenter website. As always, use that information carefully.

While looking up crime statistics and flood plane data for Tucson, I came across a PDF file on the TPD’s website that quickly highlights the laws concerning motorized bicycles. Interestingly, you have to keep the bike under 20 miles per hour to avoid licensing, insurance, and emissions inspection and the engine has to be smaller than 48 cubic centimeters if using gas or 750 watts (1 horse power) if using electric. Basically, no peddling fast down hills and you’ll be OK with the police.

Also while researching neighborhoods and houses, I came across the Tucson Police Department’s Crime Statistics website. Though it’s a clumsy and slow web-interface, the Tucson Police Department provide a means of looking up crime statistics by address and type if incident for the last few years. Firefox users need not apply; the site does not seem to work properly in anything other than Internet Explorer.

Another interesting fact found on that site is that Park Place Mall is in the top 10 list for places to get your car stolen.

Recently, I’ve starting my home searching efforts and have found it quite useful to know more about the properties that I’m looking at to get a bigger picture of the location. One such piece of information is knowing where the local flood planes are so that you can judge the risk of having a flood damage your property.

The easiest source of this information is FEMA’s maps website. Go there and enter the address that you are looking at and you’ll be given access to a map system that will show you the flood planes local to that address. The website even lets you save a .pdf copy of the information you are looking for for future reference.