There’s more to building a better neighborhood than just participating in community events and smiling at passing neighbors. Creating a better neighborhood requires more effort than that. But the benefits are worth it. Apart from living in a safer, cleaner, and greener area, improving your community can also boost your home’s real estate value. Having your home at the best value you can get it to is important in case you ever need to refinance a loan. More equity means your trusted mortgage broker can lend you more cash should you ever need it.
Support Local Businesses
This is good for your local economy and helps local workers keep their jobs and livelihoods. It’s also better for the environment. Locally produced foods, for example, have minimal carbon footprint attached to them because they didn’t travel thousands of miles to reach you.
Keep the Neighborhood Safe
Safety is a top priority for homeowners and homebuyers. See to it that the neighborhood is well-lit to make night walks safer. Homeowners can also contribute to this by installing good quality porch lights.
You can also push for better law enforcement from your local representatives. Form a neighborhood watch if there isn’t one yet or use the Citizen app if it’s functional in your area. It’s a neighborhood watch program in an app.
One thing that you probably didn’t expect would make your neighborhood safer is encouraging your neighbors to have their pets neutered or spayed. This will help to curb the population of stray animals in the area, which will help to make your neighborhood safer. Strays add to noise pollution and produce feces waste, which threatens the health and safety of neighborhood animal life. They also increase the likelihood of road and traffic accidents.
Neutering or spaying pets will help to regulate their moods, decreasing noise pollution and the likelihood of aggressive encounters. You can talk to your neighbors about hosting a community-wide neutering and spaying event with a local veterinary clinic.
Make the Area More Walkable
This will also help to make your neighborhood more walkable, which is a characteristic that boosts the value of any area. Walkability refers to a city or neighborhood’s conduciveness to foot travel. An area is walkable if its residents can reach establishments on foot within a reasonable amount of time. Roads and facilities must have clear signages. There should also be designated pedestrian and bike lanes. The area should also make walking and cycling an altogether pleasant experience, with abundant greenery and clean surroundings.
A walkable area encourages more interaction among its residents, helping to foster a tightly knit community. Through increased exercise and exposure to trees, it also promotes the wellbeing of citizens and the environment.
Part of walkability has to do with how the area was designed and built, but there are always ways to make an area more walkable. One way to do so is to plant more trees. Having abundant greenery in your area encourages you to travel on foot or bike. But make sure to also maintain the greenery by having them trimmed so that they don’t obscure road and traffic signages and stoplights.
Maintain Common Areas and Infrastructure
See to it that shared spaces are well-maintained. Remember that this will make for a neighborhood that is both safer and more beautiful. If there are cracked sidewalks, gaping holes in the street, and the like that haven’t been tended to, it’s worth taking the time to talk to your city council about it. Parks and playgrounds are key components in neighborhood social connections, so make sure that they are regularly maintained too.
Boost Your Home’s Curb Appeal
As a member of the community, you have a responsibility to the area and can contribute to making it better. This responsibility can be fulfilled not just by participating in community efforts, but also by improving your home. Hopefully, this will also inspire your neighbors to do the same.
One of the best ways to boost your home’s curb appeal is to improve your landscaping. Redeck your patio. Spruce up your porch. Install a fresh new siding. Maintain your garden or lawn. If home maintenance is difficult for you, invest in materials and fixtures that will help to make your home more low maintenance. For instance, if you find mowing and seeding your lawn too costly and arduous, you can pave a sizable part of it to reduce the area occupied by grass.
Building and maintaining a better neighborhood and community has more benefits than you think. Apart from making the area a safer place to live, it will also help to boost the real estate value of the area’s homes.
