Real Estate Directory

FBI Names Ten Safest Cities in the United States

The FBI recently published their yearly report on crime statistics. Four Southern California cities are listed in the top ten safest large cities in America.

The FBI heralded Irvine, California as the top number one safest large city in America. In cities with populations of over 100,000 Irvine had only 87 violent crimes per 100,000. The most dangerous large city, St. Louis had 2,207 violent crimes per 100,000.

Irvine police credits their first place as safest city to their community based policing. Irvine has also adopted crime prevention by environmental design that includes many safety standards such as well-lit parking lots and video cameras at the majority of city intersections.

Other Southern California large safe cities were #6, Thousands Oaks, # 7, Glendale and # 10 Simi Valley. Sunnyvale, in Northern Califonia, made # 5 on the list.

The FBI Top Ten List was determined from information obtained in initial reports submitted by  two hundred sixty-five city police departments. The reports tracked statistics on violent crimes such as murder, rape, robbery, aggravated assault and it also included indexed property crimes such as burglary, larceny and motor theft.

Existing Home Sales Are Up?

What happened to the Bubble?

The National Association of Realtors reported Thursday that that sales of existing single-family homes and condominiums rose by 5.2 percent in February to a seasonally adjusted annual rate of 6.91 million units. This despite the predicte 5 % drop compared to last year.

The prices of homes sold in February rose to $209,000 for the nationwide median.That was 10.6 percent above the median price in February 2006.   

Economists believe that both new and existing home sales will dip by around 5 percent this year as rising mortgage rates cuts into demand.

But mortgage rates seem to have perhaps stagnated because of a drop in inflation. But Lereah said all indications so far were pointing to a gradual slowdown in sales to a more sustainable pace.

By region of the country, sales rose by 19.2 percent in the Northeast and were up 11.1 percent in the Midwest and 5.1 percent in the West in February. Only the South showed weakness last month with sales there dropping by 2.5 percent from the January pace.

Lereah said sales activity at present was really a "tale of two cities" with some of the hottest markets showing declines while some medium priced markets still posting strong sales gains.

He said that sales were down by double-digit levels in such hot sales markets as Phoenix, Fort Lauderdale and San Diego. He said, by contrast, sales were up by double-digit amounts in aeas such as Indianapolis, Albuquerque and Houston.