The ten minute walk

Buyers tour houses at eleven in the morning on a Saturday, which is the hour at which every neighborhood in Pennsylvania looks approximately the same. The useful hour is closer to six on a weekday.

Go at the hour you will actually live there

Six in the evening tells you where people park, whether the street is a route or a destination, whether anyone is outside, and how the light falls on the front of the house at the moment you would be coming home. A street that is quiet at eleven and a wall of parked cars at six is a different street.

What to notice

• Trees. Mature street trees mean the neighborhood has been maintained by somebody for forty years.
• Sidewalk repair. Patched concrete is a sign of ongoing private investment.
• The condition of the third best house on the block, not the best one.
• Whether the corner property is cared for. Corners are where neglect starts.
• Noise floor. Stand still for sixty seconds and listen.
• Where the nearest thing worth walking to is, and whether the walk there is pleasant.

You are not evaluating a house. You are evaluating the twenty houses that will determine what yours is worth.

The edge condition

Pay attention to what a neighborhood backs onto. A rear boundary against protected farmland, a park, or a school field behaves very differently over twenty years than a rear boundary against a parcel with development potential. In Lancaster and Chester Counties in particular, the difference between preserved ground and unpreserved ground is worth asking about directly.

Ask three people

Someone walking a dog will tell you the truth about a street in ninety seconds. So will the person at the counter of the nearest coffee shop. So will a neighbor doing yard work, if you say plainly that you are thinking about buying nearby.