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If you want to be totally honest, then yes, burglar bars are indicative of a black neighborhood, and where I live, black neighborhoods have higher crime. So in the end, burglar bars = higher crime area. No secret there.
Where I live, lots of Asians (mostly Chinese) will put bars on houses, even when they're spending over a million on the house. I do not live in a high crime area. It's more of a cultural thing. So, it's not always true. (The house down the street from me, which would like for 3+ million, also has bars. I think it's ugly but it's not my house.)
If I were forced to live in El Paso I'd have a gun nest on the roof with a .50 cal machine gun
El paso has been one of the safest cities of its size in the entire US.
I can walk my dogs at 1 am without worry, leave my garage door open all night, and have everything still be there in the morning, etc.
I live near Houston, in a quiet, safe rural area. My wife is from Trinidad and Tobago, a high-crime country, and she still doesn't feel safe in a home without burglar bars and security doors. Would buying a house in a subdivision and installing those security items reduce the property value and the neighborhood around the house? Would we have to find a house in the country and then install those bars and doors so others won't complain?
Yes because it would give an indication that the neighborhood is unsafe. Instead install a security system with cameras, locks that work, strong doors that don't look different. Your wife has to understand that she isn't in Trinidad anymore. You can do things to be secure without resorting to burglar bars and other things you would see in a bad neighborhood.
Location: East of Seattle since 1992, 615' Elevation, Zone 8b - originally from SF Bay Area
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If I were looking for a home to buy and saw bars on the windows in the listing pictures it would be an automatic "skip and move on." It doesn't necessarily affect the value, but does limit the potential pool of buyers.
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