Please register to participate in our discussions with 2 million other members - it's free and quick! Some forums can only be seen by registered members. After you create your account, you'll be able to customize options and access all our 15,000 new posts/day with fewer ads.
I've seen some posters talk about looking up the history of a house. Seems like a smart idea. How do you do that?
In addition to postings on our MLS, We like looking up the same house on sites that post all sorts of demographics about each neighborhood. But we're wondering how useful demographics are when you are talking about neighborhoods that are small (only a few blocks, maybe 100 or less homes).
Example, one development I like has maybe 100 3500 sf homes. I looked up the stats for "renters vs. owners" and was surprised to see it listed as having 47% renters. That seems really high, and maybe even a bit worrisome. We want neighbors we can get to know, and don't really want to live with renters all over the street because then your neighbors are changing all the time and homes are often empty. But at the same time we're wondering if the demographics are skewed because they might include other nearby neighborhoods and the large condo complex about 3/4 mile away. I asked our realtor and he said his guess was it was mostly owners, but he didn't know for sure. Thoughts?
Same goes for "highest degree of education attained" and other such demographics. Not that it really matters, I guess, but wondering how accurate such demographics are when you're talking about a small development of 100 or less homes.
I've seen some posters talk about looking up the history of a house. Seems like a smart idea. How do you do that?
In addition to postings on our MLS, We like looking up the same house on sites that post all sorts of demographics about each neighborhood. But we're wondering how useful demographics are when you are talking about neighborhoods that are small (only a few blocks, maybe 100 or less homes).
Example, one development I like has maybe 100 3500 sf homes. I looked up the stats for "renters vs. owners" and was surprised to see it listed as having 47% renters. That seems really high, and maybe even a bit worrisome. We want neighbors we can get to know, and don't really want to live with renters all over the street because then your neighbors are changing all the time and homes are often empty. But at the same time we're wondering if the demographics are skewed because they might include other nearby neighborhoods and the large condo complex about 3/4 mile away. I asked our realtor and he said his guess was it was mostly owners, but he didn't know for sure. Thoughts?
Same goes for "highest degree of education attained" and other such demographics. Not that it really matters, I guess, but wondering how accurate such demographics are when you're talking about a small development of 100 or less homes.
That data comes from census tracts so it is the census tract not the specific neighborhood that has that overall data.
"a small development of 100 or [fewer] homes"
Walk around. At all hours and days of the week. Talk to people. You have time.
Personally, I think trends are more important.
For example:
1. My neighborhood has many/some 80+ year old Hispanic widows with 8th-grade educations barely surviving on Social Security. Being replaced by Boomers, DINKS and young couple with money.
2. My neighborhood has a lot of rentals in small (800 sqft, 1910ish) houses. As the landlords cash out, the replacement house is a duplex selling for $780K per side.
3. When we moved into our neighborhood 5.7 years ago, we saw drug deals at the park which is 100m from our house. Have not seen one for over 4 years now.
For every house I looked at, I pulled up the records for the exact house with the municipality- town, city, township, village, etc... In my area, they are online. I was able to see tax history, water/sewer bills, previous sale information, building permits, etc... One house I was interested in has changed hands 6 times in 10 years. Makes me nervous. The house I have under contract was owned by the same people for 25 years.
The easiest way to get the history of the house is to check online records with the county property assessor/appraiser.
Each county may have different info or set up differently so it's harder to find. My local one is easy to see everything clearly. I can see the amount of taxes paid for the last 10 years. Property value assessments. Year built or imporved/updated/expanded. Footprint of the home. Sales transactions and amounts paid, for my home it only goes back to 1977. Permit data. flood info plus more. I can also click the next or previous parcel and see all the same info and see how much my neighbors are paying for taxes and how much they paid for the home.
It's different for different areas. For instance, in my area, I had to call the City and visit the building department to pull all the old permit documents, pulled up water/power/sewer bills by contacting the local utilities, and again went to the county to pull up parcel maps.
In addition to that, I did a grantee/grantor search at the county to get a rough chain of title back to parcel creation, and then did the same search using the seller's name to see what their financial situation was prior to making an offer (to determine how "motivated" they were). All public record information if you're willing to dig a bit, and it gives you an idea of how hardball you can play.
"a small development of 100 or [fewer] homes"
Walk around. At all hours and days of the week. Talk to people. You have time.
Definitely agree with this. It's what we did the last time we bought a house, and sometimes the old fashioned way is best. It's a little tricky when you live several hours away, but we are trying to work a little bit of this into every house hunting trip we make.
Location: East of Seattle since 1992, 615' Elevation, Zone 8b - originally from SF Bay Area
44,585 posts, read 81,206,701 times
Reputation: 57822
Our county Assessor site provides not only the tax bill history, in detail, but the ownership history for as far back as the records go. There will also be a link to pdf files for the actual sale/transfer transactions, and any building permits. Demographic data is most accurate if coming from the city's own website, because they may have records that the department of census does not, such as home based business licenses. If you check other online sources and compare they will probably all be close. What you are looking for would be difficult, because I know of no source for demographics on such a small geographic area. In our entire city of about 60k, it's 93% owner occupied, and the other 7% is mostly the few large apartment complexes, but there is no way to find out if the house next door or across the street from your potential new house is a renter. Usually with a lot of 3,500 sf homes there are not going to be a lot of rentals.
Thanks for the great suggestions of how to find the history of home ownership. We were able to do it! Very helpful to see this.
Please register to post and access all features of our very popular forum. It is free and quick. Over $68,000 in prizes has already been given out to active posters on our forum. Additional giveaways are planned.
Detailed information about all U.S. cities, counties, and zip codes on our site: City-data.com.
Please register to participate in our discussions with 2 million other members - it's free and quick! Some forums can only be seen by registered members. After you create your account, you'll be able to customize options and access all our 15,000 new posts/day with fewer ads.
