While crime is a common reason to steer people away from buying what could be an otherwise perfect home, it is only part of a larger picture on a neighborhood safety.
Frequency of natural disasters, road quality, unemployment rates, access to medical care, and even vaccination rates all contribute to a neighborhood with higher property values and where residents feel at ease.
Those were all among the factors that personal finance website WalletHub looked at when deciding that Maryland's Columbia is the safest place in the country to own a home.
The Safest Place to Own a Home Hasn't Changed in Five Years
For the fifth year in a row, the 100,000 person suburb in between Baltimore and Washington, D.C. topped WalletHub's list for its neighborly feel and economic opportunities due to its placement in between two major cities.
Nashua, New Hampshire and Laredo, Texas came close behind Columbia as the safest cities in the U.S.
Portland, Maine; Warwick, Rhode Island and Yonkers, New York all landed in the top six cities for safety.
A high sense of resident safety is also directly correlated with property values. With the exception of Laredo, a median home in each of the top five cities costs well above the national average.
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The least safe city, meanwhile, is St. Louis, Missouri — a ranking that arose due to a combination of poor economic outlook and some of the highest crime rates in the country.
A high rate of traffic fatalities has also placed a few mid-size cities at the top of the unsafe ranking.
Fort Lauderdale in Florida and San Bernardino in California followed St. Louis on that end. Detroit, Baton Rouge, and Memphis rounded out the top five.
Safety (And Real Estate Values) Are Determined By a Number of Factors
"No one can avoid all danger, however, and we take on a certain level of risk based on where we choose to live," write the study's authors. "Some cities are simply better at protecting their residents from harm."
When looked at per capita, traffic accidents were the most frequent in Baton Rouge and St. Louis and least likely to occur in Maryland's Columbia and California's Glendale.
According to WalletHub's calculations, a resident of Columbia is 36 times less likely to get into a car accident than a resident of Memphis.
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Along with Honolulu, another city in Hawaii also made the list of safe places to be a driver.
The number of police officers was highest in the country's metropolises — Washington, D.C. predictably topped the list and was followed by New York and nearby Jersey City.
The cities with the lowest number of law enforcement personnel, meanwhile, were all in California.
Fontana, Modesto, Fremont, Irvine, and Chula Vista have some of the lowest police presence in the country but scored mid-range when it comes to overall safety.
"Aside from the types of hazards that can cause bodily injury or other physical harm, taking out an unaffordable second mortgage, forgoing health insurance or even visiting unsecured websites are also ways people run into danger," reads the WalletHub study. "One of the biggest worries for many people right now is the cost of inflation, which reached a four-decade high this year and threatens Americans' financial safety."
