A realtor’s advice about Nextdoor, an app that helps facilitate forums within neighborhoods.
Have you ever wanted to communicate suspicious activity in your neighborhood? Did you find a beautiful tabby cat in your garage, but you don’t own a cat? Not sure who to hire to paint your home? While Facebook is for “friends,” Twitter for trending “news” and LinkedIn for “business” – Nextdoor is for connecting “neighbors” … in virtual reality.
Nextdoor is a social media platform present in over 184,000 neighborhoods and is attracting “neighbors” to social media up and down the streets of America – even neighbors who you wouldn’t typically see logged on to Facebook or Instagram. The Pew Research Center estimates that 67 percent of seniors in the United States are online with four in 10 seniors owning smart phones, which is more than double from 2013. While I typically meet my neighbors walking their dogs or taking out their trash, Nextdoor serves as a great forum when you need to communicate with all of you neighbors about a particular topic that isn’t relevant to Facebook.
How is Nextdoor different? Nextdoor is unlike other social media apps as it is touted as private and local to only your neighborhood and/or surrounding neighborhoods. Nextdoor members must undergo a number of safety checks before being approved as a member and/or be invited by a current neighbor. Nextdoor verifies each person’s address, requires the member’s real names; their address is never shared with third-party vendors.
Nextdoor has the same features or topics for each neighborhood: recommendations, real estate, for sale and free, events, crime and safety, lost and found, documents and general. It is not uncommon in some parts of the country for local law enforcement agencies to encourage neighborhoods to join Nextdoor as a tool for public agencies to communicate to its citizens. To date, over 3,000 agencies use Nextdoor to connect.
Prospective homeowners could benefit from the Nextdoor app when considering a neighborhood. The Fair Housing Act makes it difficult for realtors to answer questions about neighborhoods without violating federal fair housing law. The core purpose of this law is to prevent real estate professionals from steering prospective homeowners toward or away from a neighborhood based on any of the classes under federal protection. Nextdoor has become the new neighborhood-watch meeting place.
Next Door’s mission is to bring back the cohesiveness of neighborhoods of yesteryear. Most neighborhoods in the Greater Gainesville area are represented on Nextdoor. Now is the perfect opportunity for you to meet and share information with neighbors or get to know your neighbors better!