So you may be asking, why am I writing about crime here, after all isn’t this site about real estate? Correct but there are few things that can affect property values more than crime rates and school districts. Not to mention, from an economic development standpoint, crime also plays a role in the success we have as a region attracting businesses to St Louis to create jobs which also has a major impact on home prices.
The good news is, based upon stats the FBI just released for the first half of last year, crime in St Louis is on the decline, both violent crimes and non-violent crimes, from the same period the year before. As the table below shows, overall, violent crime for the first half of 2014 declined 5.6% from the same period in 2013, in spite of the fact the murder rate increased over 18%. Four of the five non-violent crimes reported on declined, three of them double digits, from the year before and arson was the only that increased.