MILFORD – A real estate website has placed Milford at number eight on a list of the 10 safest places in New Hampshire.

Exeter came in at number one.

According to the Movoto Real Estate Blog, it compiled the list starting with towns and cities with populations of 5,000 residents or more, gathered from the 2010 U.S. Census.

Then it used the FBI’s 2012 Uniform Crime Report to find crime data for these places, omitting any that did not report data to the bureau, which left a total of 20 places.

Then they divided the crimes of murder, rape, robbery, assault, burglary, theft and vehicle theft into four categories: murder, other violent crimes, property crimes and total crimes.

Next, they calculated each of those crime rates based on crimes per 100,000 residents, in order to fairly compare places with large and small populations.

Finally, they weighted rankings so that murders, violent crimes, and property crimes each made up 30 percent of the overall score, where the total number of crimes accounted for just 10 percent. Then they averaged these weighted rankings into one overall score.

The lowest of these scores went to the winner, Exeter, followed by Londonderry, Durham, Hanover, Berlin, Hudson, Hampton, Milford, Derry and Portsmouth.