You’re thinking about buying a new home. The house is perfect and the location is great, but how do you know if the neighbors match up? Before you make your home purchase final, there a few things to do in order to avoid home burglaries, neighbors with yappy dogs or any other less-than-wonderful neighborhood issues.

Get the inside scoop about foreclosures

Wondering if the street where your dream home is located is also home to a few foreclosures? While you can pay to subscribe to bank-owned lists, many real estate agents will have that information as well. The reason to be concerned is because a neighborhood with a higher amount of foreclosures can potentially drag your home value down.

Look up crime stats

Most cities now make crime data publicly available on maps and there are a few nationwide crime report maps that allow you to look up specific neighborhoods. Compare and contrast areas to see what the area looks like the best fit for you.

Visit at all hours

The absolute best way to get a sense of a neighborhood is to visit it repeatedly at all times of the day and night. Are there dogs that bark all day long? Do neighbors host raucous parties on weekends? The only way you’ll know is to spend some time walking around and visiting parts of the area. If you can’t get to the area during the week, have a trusted friend do some surveillance for you.

Talk to someone

If you happen to see someone outside their home, or out walking, ask them what their sense of the neighborhood is — the kind of people who live there, the street traffic or any other burning questions you may have. If you can’t grab a neighbor, talk to the mail carrier. As someone who frequents the area often, a local mail carrier will be able to give you his or her sense of the neighborhood.

Do online research

The Internet is a wonderful place. With a few, simple strokes of the keyboard and a few key phrases entered into your favorite search engine, you can find information on just about anything. Type in the neighborhood’s name and find blogs and news articles about the ‘hood. By doing your research, you’ll soon be able to piece together a pretty good idea of what the neighborhood is like.

One of the city’s largest residential brokerages, Prudential Douglas Elliman, cried foul against a small competitor on Monday.

Elliman filed a complaint against brokers Saunders & Associates claiming that it illegally registered various Internet domain names associated with Prudential Douglas Elliman so that customers searching online are automatically directed to Saunders’ website.

As a result, Elliman is seeking damages as well as a court order that forbids Saunders from “engaging in any further malicious and anti-commercial activity directed at plaintiff, including the registration of any Internet domain names associated with plaintiff,” according to the filing. The filing also alleged that Saunders stole the identities of several well-known and high-producing Elliman real estate brokers so that any customers searching for them online are automatically directed to Saunders’ websites.

“This is an action seeking to reveal a gross violation of Prudential Douglas Elliman’s proprietary rights through the sly and dishonest registration of domain names by Saunders & Associates,” said Stanley Arkin of the law firm of Arkin Kaplan Rice, who represents Prudential Douglas Elliman, in a statement.

Andrew Saunders, founder and president of Saunders & Associates, did not receive a copy of the complaint. However, Mr. Saunders said he is not aware of owning any domain names that should not belong to his firm. “If we did own names that are inappropriate, we will give them back immediately,” he said.

Mr. Saunders acknowledges that his firm owns and has registered 3,000 domain names that might result in high page ranking when certain phrases are entered into Google for searches. According to the Elliman complaint, the “defendants’ marketing strategy is marked by nefarious, anti-competitive and illegal conduct.”

The complaint also noted published news reports last month in which Mr. Saunders admitted misconduct in registering two domain names that belonged to brokers registered at Elliman and at The Corcoran Group. Mr. Saunders said he transferred ownership of those domain names back within a week of finding out about the act and claimed “an overzealous staffer” was responsible for inappropriately buying those names.

The complaint claims that Saunders has not “relinquished ownership and control over all of the Internet domain names acquired to further their scheme. This includes at least one domain name closely associated with defendants’ competition, which continues to direct Internet browsers to a website registered and controlled by defendants.”

Saunders & Associates, a two-and-a-half-year-old brokerage with 70 brokers, recently opened a second office in Southampton on Long Island and competes directly against Prudential Douglas Elliman in the Hamptons.