{"id":29,"date":"2023-03-05T11:33:59","date_gmt":"2023-03-05T11:33:59","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/ghothi.co.uk\/?p=29"},"modified":"2025-06-14T22:56:28","modified_gmt":"2025-06-14T22:56:28","slug":"visualising-local-crime-data-to-make-house-hunting-less-painful","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/ghothi.co.uk\/?p=29","title":{"rendered":"Making a House Screening Tool"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
When I started looking at houses, one thing was clear: location matters. A lot!<\/p>\n\n\n\n
But it’s hard to get a feel for a place without actually living there.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Crime stats seemed like a good proxy for quickly finding out what the quality of life is like in an area without having to check every possible metric. Not perfect, but better than nothing.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Websites already exist for this kind of stuff, but I found most suferred from:<\/p>\n\n\n\n
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limited data (e.g. showing past 3 months only),<\/li>\n\n\n\n
hard to interpret,<\/li>\n\n\n\n
vague (doesn’t say the crime severity),<\/li>\n\n\n\n
behind a paywall.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n\n\n\n
Eventually, I realised the raw data is publicly available anyway on local council and gov websites (in CSV format, with time, place and crime type).<\/p>\n\n\n\nCrime data in CSV format from UK Gov website<\/em> (over 550,000 incidents in the Birmingham area since 2020!…)<\/em><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n
But this data in its raw format is meaningless. So I made a simple tool.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
What It Does<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
You enter a postcode.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
It pulls up all reported crimes within 350 metres.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Shows them on a map as a heatmap. That\u2019s it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
It\u2019s quick to get a sense of whether an area is worth shortlisting or skipping.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Here’s a basic preview of what I put together:<\/p>\n\n\n\n<\/figure>\n\n\n\n
How It Works<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
In short, we need to:<\/p>\n\n\n\n
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Convert postcodes into map coordinates<\/strong>.<\/li>\n\n\n\n
Load and filter all the crime data<\/strong> (pandas dataframe).<\/li>\n\n\n\n
Find which crimes are close to the property<\/strong> (Haversine formula to find crimes occurring within a 350-meter radius of a lat\/long).<\/li>\n\n\n\n
Visualise the results<\/strong> (folium to create an interactive heatmap, grouping nearby crimes to reduce clutter and adding informative tooltips).<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n\n\n\n
Step 1: Getting Coordinates from a Postcode<\/h3>\n\n\n\n
First, use Nominatim API (from OpenStreetMap) to convert a postcode into latitude and longitude coordinates.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
![\"\"](\"https:\/\/ghothi.co.uk\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/05\/Crime-data_GHothi-1024x673.png\")
![\"\"](\"https:\/\/ghothi.co.uk\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/05\/House-Hunting_GHothi-1.gif\")
<\/figure>\n\n\n\n