Before buying your dream home, it would be nice to know the last sale price of the property wouldn't it? Would you also like to know if that basement apartment was built with a legal permit? I can guarantee that most potential home buyers would answer YES to both of these questions.
Luckily, there is a website to help us with this question - Property Shark.
Property Shark will give you the following information:
- Last Sale Price
- Tax Assessment
- Permits
- Square Footage
- Room Counts
- Parcel Map information
- Owner Name
Basic Membership to Property Shark is Free and entitles you to a limited number of reports everyday. I ran a report on my own property and all the information was 100% accurate. It listed all my previous tax bills, my current assessed value from my local town, and of course my personal name and address.
Taking a few minutes and checking out this website before you purchase a home is a great idea and hopefully it will help someone avoid some unnecessary stress. Knowledge is Power!
Kate
Kate's Home Staging and Redesign, your local home stager and interior redesigner who specializes in home staging, interior design, color consultations, accessory selection, room layouts, space planning, home decor discounts, and sell semi-custom window coverings. Call Kate to schedule your design consultation at 845-538-3623 or visit www.kateshomestaging.com
The sad thing about this...is why would anyone need a real estate agent with all of this information available? Thanks for sharing.
Jim ~ We will always need Realtors to market properties and help us find the best area. This type of information you will never get from an online website. Kate
Hi Kate -- Our city (Portland) has a website with all of this info for properties within city limits, but we don't have it for surrounding towns or counties ... until now, learning about Property Shark from your post -- thank you!! When I first clicked on your link, it appeared that it only applies to NY, but when you search a bit further into the site, a list of other states appears.
I can see how this would be of value Kate, but unfortunately my area isn't in their system, YET. Just another example of HICKSVILLE, USA. (And everybody thinks California is so ahead of the game...NOT).
Kate, great tool to share! At first, when I went to check it out, I was disappointed it was limited to NY, but I still entered my address here in MN, and even though it didn't have the property records, it did list great demographic info for the surrounding area.....so it is still a VERY useful tool for anywhere in the country, because as we all know, staging according to demographics of your potential buyers is HUGE, so everyone needs to still take a look at this site.
Thanks again for sharing!
Julie
Thanks for the TIP!!! Will see how this can add value!
Like Gretchen, my area isn't in the database yet. I will keep checking for it, though, as I can see where this would be very helpful.
Kate, I haven't really explored the site yet although I'm definitely familiar with it. It will be interesting, I'll have to take time and go check it out.
Kate..Thanks for the site. I will check it out and see how it stacks up for my area.
This looks like a great site, but like Ginger, my county isn't there. Darn! I will bookmark and check again in the future.
My county isn't on here, but I can see how this could be a great tool for homeowners.
Maureen ~ Initially when I selected the website, I was brought to a limited number if states to choose from - but I cannot figure out how to get back there (probably something to do with my Internet cookies). I am glad you were able to get back to the States. I thought this site was very interesting. Thanks for posting.
Ginger ~ I should have mentioned in my post that I did not see all the states listed, hopefully the site will continue to be updated. Thanks for stopping by.
Julie ~ I am glad you were able to find some demographics for your area.
Kathy ~ I hope it will help you, I was thinking it would be helpful to home buyers to check on permits and tax records but the site has some more info. Thanks.
Kathy A ~ Hopefully they will keep updating, thanks for stopping by.
Carole ~ I would definitely check out the address of a house before I purchased it, but time is always the issue ;-)
Carra ~ Sounds good, thanks for posting.
Sharon ~ It really seems to be missing quite a few areas, I wonder if there are more sites out there like this one - I may need to look a little bit more. Thanks for stopping by.
Cindy ~ I agree, if there area is included. Thanks for stopping by.
Thanks for sharing this resource Kate! I will check it out also.