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Location, Inc. Names Top 5 Vacation Spots in America

Feb 18, 2003 | by: The NeighborhoodScout Team | Media

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

CONTACTS:
Paul Gallagher
Director of Marketing
Location, Inc.
marketing@locationinc.com

WORCESTER, MA (February 18, 2003) – Every year about this time millions of Americans get fed-up with shoveling snow and head south on vacation seeking warm, sunny climes and a break from the cold. And while sitting on the beach many of us wonder, why not make this wonderful vacation area my permanent home? But before you pull up stakes, you might want to consider the advantages of relocating to one of America’s top 5 permanent vacation spots.

“Permanent vacation spots are places that combine many vacation qualities, like warm sunny weather, beaches and leisure activities, with solid community attributes like top-quality public schools, low crime and educated neighbors,” says Andrew Schiller, president of Location Inc™.

Schiller, a PhD geographer, studied America’s 61,000 neighborhoods using data from a variety of government agencies, including the Census Bureau, the Department of Education and even the FBI. The result of his work is one of the largest neighborhood-matching databases anywhere.

“We call it NeighborhoodScout™, and it’s accessible over the Internet,” says Schiller. “You can describe your ideal neighborhood and find best matches in any area of the country.”

Schiller created his list of the top 5 permanent vacation spots by using NeighborhoodScout to search the nation’s most popular warm beach vacation regions, using criteria important to many home buyers: excellent public schools, low crime rates, owner-occupied housing, and educated neighbors – all in locations known for sun, surf and relaxation.

“People often want to move to a vacation spot, but rarely do these places offer the qualities people look for in a permanent home,” said Schiller. “Using NeighborhoodScout, I discovered five great options for real people that combine the best of both worlds.”

Here are the top 5 (from east to west):

“These top five spots vary in price and character, from quiet communities of shingled homes among sea-grass dunes, to high rise condos, to lively boardwalk scenes, but all five are near major cities, and are delightful places to consider living in as well as top destinations for a mid-winter vacation,” said Schiller.

Editor’s Note

“Educated neighbors” means people 25 and older with college degrees or graduate degrees. “Excellent public schools” means combined measures of spending per pupil on core instruction, combined with student-to-teacher ratios (smaller classes and more personal attention to students), and graduation rates. “Crime” is all FBI crime index scores – both violent and property – as a rate per 1,000 population for the community. Owner-occupied dwellings means people who live in these spots often own their residence, be it a free-standing house or a unit in a high-rise condo. Data were derived from the FBI and US Justice Department, the US Bureau of the Census, and the National Center for Education Statistics, and queried directly with NeighborhoodScout.

About Location Inc

Location Inc is a Massachusetts-based company born of university research, specializing in nationwide relocation software, retail site selection, and real estate investment advising. Learn more about NeighborhoodScout at www.neighborhoodscout.com.