County Website

[Seaharbour]

and i do not care to know my neighbors business, unless of course they are a child predator or something like that, then that is My right to know, as well as everyone else who has children and want to protect them..when you committ crimes as gravious as these, you lose your rights to privacy..too bad, then your a criminal and we have a right to protect ourselves and stay away from them!!!

[pghquest]

Originally Posted by Seaharbour

Yes..I can cause those who Committed crimes deserve that kind of treatment, while the rest of us who obey the rules and laws...deserve our privacy.

Sorry but you cant have it both ways, even though we all would like to. Your personal history cant be a closed book, but your neighbors life long history out for public display.

The original poster of this thread, rents out properties.. I'm sure they do background checks on their tenants, as they seem to rent out higher priced properties.. (just from other postings here). That individual should be entitled to do a criminal background check when "doing business" with an individual, but credit reports and background checks should be similar, authorization required on a need to know basis.

I'm one of those individuals who needs to have a background check down year, which includes child abuse clearances, criminal history, clearance forms, in addition to providing tax records, I'm an open book to one of the orgnizations that I conduct business with. Thats simply because they ask for it, I agree to provide it, but as the original poster is happy that you cant search by name anymore (even though you really can), its a fruitless task unless your going to remove all other capabilities to conduct a search without the end users signed authorization. (which is how it should be)

[pghquest]

Originally Posted by Seaharbour

and i do not care to know my neighbors business, unless of course they are a child predator or something like that, then that is My right to know, as well as everyone else who has children and want to protect them..when you committ crimes as gravious as these, you lose your rights to privacy..too bad, then your a criminal and we have a right to protect ourselves and stay away from them!!!

And your neighbors right to privacy as to if they are the property owner or tenant? After all, its a known fact that when your neighbors own their properties, the value of your property is higher because of maintenance and crime issues.

[Seaharbour]

I stand by what I said..to each their own opinion!

[TRO Z]

pgh quest...wanted to thank you for finding out some of the other top 100 cities that still allow that search method...Too Busy to try and find myself...But the info was definetly needed..

I see a couple people talking about going downtown ....and being able to pull up all that info...Public Knowledge....Not as simple as you think...Not as easy as typing in a last name and POOF---everything in allegheny county

For people who want to pull up their neighbors house, or a certain adress...go ahead, thats your right..and it's still available....But for people to have access to that kind of search criteria at their fingertips..Why..

Tell me what the benefit is, to pulling up info by name or company name????

[pghquest]

Originally Posted by TRO Z

pgh quest...wanted to thank you for finding out some of the other top 100 cities that still allow that search method...Too Busy to try and find myself...But the info was definetly needed..

I see a couple people talking about going downtown ....and being able to pull up all that info...Public Knowledge....Not as simple as you think...Not as easy as typing in a last name and POOF---everything in allegheny county

For people who want to pull up their neighbors house, or a certain adress...go ahead, thats your right..and it's still available....But for people to have access to that kind of search criteria at their fingertips..Why..

Tell me what the benefit is, to pulling up info by name or company name????

I'm not one of those, provide everything to the world, its all public info type of person myself, but removing the name search from one part of the county website, and then allowing people to search for it on another (recorder of deeds section) pretty much defeats the purpose of removing the name to begin with.

I can tell you that I have used the name search for several reasons

1) I've been looking for a new property to buy, one of my criterias at this point is I am focusing on bank repo's.. Its a heck of a lot easier to key "PNC" into the search field then filter out ones that wont work.

2) I'm currently discussing doing a real estate deal with a neighbor. For my protection, one of the items I did was jump online to do a search by name, to see how much experience they have. (They claimed lots, I was easily able to confirm that they were not lying)

3) I lost touch with a friend of mine over the years, their number was unlisted, I knew they bought a house in Plum, and simply looked up their address to send them a Christmas card. (yeah, no real benefit to the "county" but removing the name field simply meant that I have to go to the recorder of deeds office instead)

4) I recently received a personal judgment against someone. Before going to court and getting a judgment against them, I logged online (well my lawyer did) to research any other properties that individual owned, before I decided if it was worth the $30,000 in legal fees that I was going to face.

5) My parents own a bar/hotel business, and I wanted to research comparible values of properties that were similar to hers. It was a lot easier to research by "bar" and pull up a list then drive around, finding bars.

6) When researching properties to buy, its nice to see the reason why an individual bought a property 6 months ago, and now selling it so quickly. Researching by name can provide extremely valuable information to decide if the individual is a flipper, the property might have problems that the seller isnt disclosing (such as the seller has 20 other properties, but they held onto them for years) or other scenarios.

7) I'm in the process of negotiating the purchase of a property in a location that does not provide this information. (not even by address). Let me tell you that I sit here, wracking my head over trying to determine what a decent asking price is of this property is.

8) As long as your going to publicize in the newspaper someones name, address, property sales price etc, all of this information is all over the internet anyways.

Personally, I believe that some of this information should remain private, including purchase price, copies of deeds etc, but I also believe that items like criminal records should also be private. There is simply no reason for me to know that my neighbor had gotten into a fight 10 years ago, and spent 2 months in jail, but all of this information is public.

[Tallysmom]

Originally Posted by pghquest

1) I've been looking for a new property to buy, one of my criterias at this point is I am focusing on bank repo's.. Its a heck of a lot easier to key "PNC" into the search field then filter out ones that wont work.

AS an FYI -- I just discovered that Trulia - Real Estate, Homes For Sale, Sold Properties, Real Estate Maps is listing foreclosures now... you can actually just look for them.

That's how I discovered the depressing fact that 1449 of the homes in my zip code were in foreclosure, preforeclosure or bank owned.

[pghquest]

Originally Posted by Tallysmom

AS an FYI -- I just discovered that Trulia - Real Estate, Homes For Sale, Sold Properties, Real Estate Maps is listing foreclosures now... you can actually just look for them.

That's how I discovered the depressing fact that 1449 of the homes in my zip code were in foreclosure, preforeclosure or bank owned.

Great, thanks for the tip, I've found emailforeclosures.com which is great because they will email them to you. Sometimes I find them before the bank even knows they are available..

[scrapp]

Originally Posted by pghquest

Personally, I believe that some of this information should remain private, including purchase price

Purchase price is quite often useful when evaluating the fairness of your property assessment (relative to other near by properties). It shouldn't be private.

[Seaharbour]

truila is truly wonderful!