Every neighborhood page scores 15 qualities. Below is a plain-language description of what each one measures, what drives it up or down, and when it matters.
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Walkability
Are there sidewalks? Do they connect? Are the crossings marked? iHuus measures the physical infrastructure a pedestrian actually deals with — not how many coffee shops are nearby.
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Acoustic Comfort
How loud it is outside your window. Road traffic, rail corridors, and flight paths all factor in. Scores below 3.0 mean significant background noise — the kind that follows you indoors.
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Air Quality
Particulates, ozone, and emission source proximity — updated annually. Air quality varies significantly at sub-neighborhood scale; the difference between a 5.5 and 6.3 is real and measurable.
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Flood Safety
Elevation, distance from waterways, and FEMA flood zone data combined. Higher = safer. Many neighborhoods with low flood safety sit just a few blocks from high-scoring ones — not something a city-level view would tell you.
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School Quality
Individual school ratings — not district averages — for every school within the boundary. The difference between a neighborhood average and a top-rated school three blocks away is exactly the kind of detail that matters.
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Industrial Proximity
How close industrial land use is to where you'd sleep. Higher = farther from the heavy stuff. Useful on top of the dedicated air quality and noise dimensions — it catches the land-use context they don't fully cover.
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Privacy Index
Gap between you and your neighbor — measured, not assumed. Dense urban blocks score 2–3. Suburban residential with full setbacks scores 6–8. Useful if spacing and separation matter to you.
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Dog Friendliness
Sidewalk width, park access, off-leash zones, and how crowded the walking routes tend to be. Not just "parks nearby" — the walkable quality of those parks matters too.
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Neighborhood Vibe
A composite liveability signal combining walkability, acoustic comfort, visual appeal, and social environment factors. Reflects how a neighborhood "feels" as a whole — useful for a quick top-level filter before diving into the individual qualities.
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Urban-Rural Index
Built-environment character — density, lot sizes, street width. Higher = more urban. Good for filtering out the "urban adjacent to a highway" areas that don't actually feel urban to live in.
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Visual Appeal
Street-level upkeep — buildings, landscaping, the general state of things. Scores vary noticeably block by block. Updated annually.
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Population Age Profile
Who actually lives there. Higher score = more households with school-age kids. Useful if the demographic mix matters — whether you're looking for families, young professionals, or quieter retiree-heavy blocks.
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Ideological Lean
Political lean derived from precinct-level voting records. 10 = strongly progressive, 1 = strongly conservative. Useful context for buyers who care about neighborhood culture.
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Health Insurance Coverage
Share of residents with health insurance coverage, derived from ACS data. A useful socioeconomic signal — correlates with healthcare access and economic stability at the neighborhood level.
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Fire Safety
Fire hazard severity based on fuel load, slope, and historical fire perimeter data. Higher = lower fire risk. Scores are most meaningful in California, Texas and Florida where wildfire-urban interface zones are well-mapped. Flat urban cores typically score near 0 due to minimal vegetation.
About iHuus Scores Scores are on a 0–10 scale and measure the precise location, not the neighborhood as a whole. Two addresses 300 meters apart can have meaningfully different readings — the neighborhood average is a starting point, not the answer. Higher always means better, except where it's the opposite by design: Flood Safety (higher = safer) and Industrial Proximity (higher = farther from industry).